Obscure Sorrows
by ButterfliesInYourTummy
Summary: Where there should have been the warm embrace of a mother, there was nothing because she had been taken from the world moments after his birth. Where there should have been the smile of a father who ruffled his hair when he was sad, there was nothing because he... Had abandoned him? Like Father like Son. They share obscure sorrows. The feeling of his own heartbeat unsettles him.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: So I have literally been working my ass off and its only the first chapter! e.e**  
 **I think its because this is my first time writing in this fandom and I don't like my writing style with it compared to others that I've read.**

 **Anyway~ Yes. Non-time traveling AU. Incest. INCEST. Technically its unintentional, but that's besides the point! If you don't like it, don't read it.**  
 **This story is going to be angsty and dark.**  
 **Minato is going to be one depressed, aloof moe foe and Naruto...is going to be one angry son of a Kushina.**  
 **Since it's late, I'm going to leave okay. I'm tired of seeing this chapter, I've seen it too much the past few weeks.**

* * *

There is a large range of emotions that a person feels in their lifetime, but there are six that are most common to the Shinobi of the village Hidden in the Leaf. There's loss, self-hatred, pain, loneliness, sorrow, and _rubatosis_.

In the middle of the night, former fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, lies wide awake in his misery and stares up at the ceiling, trying to figure out where exactly he went wrong.

He wanted to know what actions had been the fateful decision that led him to this very hour, to this agonizing lifestyle that he had built for himself.

With this free time, he can lay there in silence and ponder on it if he so desires. But only for a little while.

Only until his rubatosis kicks in and haunts him, like it does every night. Only until it turns him into a mess of tosses and turns in his cot, not only wrapping himself up in his sheets tightly with every movement, but trapping himself in his own desolate reality.

The feeling of his own heartbeat unsettles him.

It's an odd sensation, a reminder that, unlike Kushina….unlike his wife, he is still alive. He goes past the sense of feeling and thinking, coming down to the scientific makeup of himself. The dead feeling inside is overwritten by the grotesque sound of his heart, living and pounding. He remembers that while he has spent these years as a flee-on-sight Hunter-nin, fighting and killing relentlessly, his heart had been beating effortlessly, without his help and against his will.

He remembers that he has spent years training his muscles while his heart has been training on it's own, a muscle itself.

Grimacing, Minato clutched his chest with one hand and threw an arm over his eyes. The cold metal of his porcelain mask ghosted against the skin of his knuckles and he slowly realized that he hadn't even taken off his clothes.

Yes, it was all coming back to him now. Just another day as a Hunter-nin, another mission completed, another assassination and then the wretched reminder that he was all alone when he returned home and staggered through an empty house. From the creaking of the door that echoed into the vacant air to collapsing onto the bed void of any warmth, Minato would then unwillingly recall his loss.

There was no Kushina.

Every time he stumbled through the house, he wondered why he stopped in the middle of the stairway where a mirror hung on the wall. He wondered why he always looked into it when the only thing that reflected off of it was the walking flesh of a fragmented soul.

There was nothing brilliant in his blue pupils, at least not anymore. His eyes were no longer sharp, no longer as vivid and photogenic as an ocean, but rather as dull as a diseased sea. His hair-oh god-he couldn't even remember the last time he combed it properly. He'd do one, two, maybe three, strokes with the comb through the blond jaw-length locks that framed his face, and where it spiked at the top-he allowed that part of his hair to do as it pleased.

It didn't really require his care anyway. It looked fine being left alone.

Minato reached up and pulled off his white mask, carelessly tossing it to the side. He'd done it before on numerous occasions and never had trouble finding it the next morning so he figured this time would be no different. Sighing heavily, he squeezed his eyes shut in hopes that sleep would just overwhelm him. He needed its heavenly embrace, and as the days dragged on, his desire for it became stronger and stronger.

There was no escape better than sleep because at least then, he'd feel dead. And if he dreamed of Kushina, and her long pretty red strands-even better.

However, for Minato, falling asleep was easier said than done.

It seemed that it happened every night, without fail. Rubatosis would rear its ugly head and wrap its long claws around Minato in a cold, unyielding grip. In the darkness of his room, his heartbeat would echo in his head and pound in his chest. And from his back to his side, then from his side to his stomach, he would toss and turn.

He would whimper in husky, hitched breaths and sigh in irritation as he pulled his arms against his chest and curled up. Whatever God there was, he would silently pray to them in hopes to cease the alarmingly loud hammering of his heart in his ears. And when it wouldn't end, his face would scrunch up in displeasure.

At this point, his mind would begin to race. He would place his hand over the thin bones protecting his heart and he would think about how fragile he truly was, how fragile him, Kushina, Kakashi, Tsunade, and every other living, breathing being on this earth was. From every Kage, to every ninja and villager, to every ram and boar; everything was fragile, a simple creature at the mercy of an organ running on its own. An organ that decides that when it's had enough, the flesh that it lived within is no different than a body in a coffin under the ground.

On the same night of childbirth and forced extraction, Kushina's heart decided that it was time to give out and it put her in a black box that now occupied a space under the soil.

But unlike hers, Minato's pounded loud, mighty and turbulent enough to the point of uneasiness. While it never stopped, it was only at this time that it would make it's presence known, that it would remind the him that he was alive even if Kushina was not. It was like a mother's voice to their child, a soothingly soft tone that hummed, _'I'm here, I'm here...'_

It constantly taunted him of the difference between him and his wife, and a beautiful sound that the man once loved to fall asleep to became the disturbing noise that kept him awake at night.

' _I'm here, I'm here…'_

Minato forced his breathing to become a little more labored, his frantic panting beginning to override the sound of his heart. He listened to his own breaths, more content with the desperate husky noises than the beating organ inside his body. This was one of the few ways he had learned to end the hammering racket of his rubatosis and one of the most effective.

He didn't know why it helped, but it did and it didn't matter if he were ignorant to the reason. He didn't want his heart speaking to him, telling him that it was there and still kicking. He didn't care about the status of his heart and if it had stopped, he wouldn't have cared either.

 _Thump, thump. Thump, thump…_

' _I'm here, I'm here….'_

Minato bared his teeth angrily and out of annoyance threw himself over, shifting his entire body to his other side. He normally didn't sleep on his stomach-hell, he didn't like sleeping like that as he felt too valuable when he did, but if it meant ending his rubatosis then he would do it. To hell with what he was comfortable with-listening to his heart wasn't appealing either.

His heart felt like a nagging friend, one constantly in his shadow with the mindset that he needed to frequently point out the fact that he was there, or else he'd be forgotten. But Minato had forgotten his heart a long time ago, almost sixteen years to be exact. Kushina had taken a part of it with her when she left him, and he didn't want it back.

He just wished she had taken the whole thing.

The blond pulled the sheets up to his chin and within seconds, he begun to hear the fading sound of his heart. The hammering was getting quieter now, the _'I'm here….'_ leaving him to confront the miserable darkness of his room alone and he soon relaxed, sighing in relief. His body uncurled and stretched out across the large bed to get comfortable, and he pressed a hand against his chest momentarily.

His heartbeat was still there as it should have been for any living creature, but it no longer surrounded him and nauseated him like that of rubatosis. It no longer pounded in his ears and he was grateful for that.

* * *

Honestly, Minato was never surprised to wake up to someone in his house or to his front door being pounded upon by a hard fist that startled him from his slumber.

He had gotten used to the Tsunade clones that would check up on him, especially the uptight ones that enjoyed kicking him out of bed or slugging him in the face anytime he spoke negatively (which in both cases was all the time). Then there would be the few housewives randomly selected by said woman that would be in the kitchen to assure that he didn't skip breakfast or fill himself with a bowl of ramen or an energy bar as if either one were a healthy everyday choice for a man of his occupation.

According to the fifth leader of the Hidden Leaf, he may have no longer been Hokage, but he was still a shinobi and needed to eat like one.

Minato didn't wake up to either of the mentioned, but he was greeted by a horrific migraine that had him groaning and grimacing in pain the moment he sat up. He slouched forward and held his head, remaining unmoving in the silence as if a couple of seconds would ease the aching of his mind.

It didn't.

But there was no use in mopping about it; a headache was the least of his problems and so very minor compared to his other ones. So after a heavy sigh and about a minute spent rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Minato sluggishly kicked the blanket off of him, knocking it to the floor in the process and carelessly stepping on it when he passed by.

Straight across from his room was the bathroom, but he paused in the middle of the hallway at the sound of something stirring from downstairs. His blue eyes narrowed at the meek noise and he stared ahead before continuing to the bathroom anyway to quickly brush his teeth.

Probably just a housewife.

The bristles of the toothbrush gliding across Minato's teeth lazily, he tried to look anywhere else but at the mirror while he brushed, not wanting to meet the dark, sorrow-filled blue he knew were in his eyes. Instead, he stared down at the Hunter-nin mask that rested on the sink's counter; white with thin slitted eyeholes, a wavy design that ran across the place of the mouth and the emblem of the Hidden Leaf over the forehead.

With his free hand, he ran his thumb over the wavy crescent and then across the eyeholes, feeling the cool and clean porcelain material under his finger.

Cool and clean.

Just like his Hunter-nin self. Comparing him to the Minato here was an ugly idea; the former Hokage who wasn't even strong enough to protect his wife or his village was a flaccid and beaten man. Whilst the Hunter-nin Minato was ruthless; cool, calm, collected, powerful…...clean.

The blond man's eyes suddenly came to full attention, snapping from his internal thoughts with a raise of his eyebrows. He halted his brushing and gazed carefully to study the mask sitting on the sink with a suspicious twitch of his lips.

Now that he thought about it, he didn't remember putting the mask in the bathroom (in fact he had thrown it in his room somewhere). Nor did he remember cleaning it, as it lacked the dirt of yesterday when his opponent had managed to throw him to the ground, smudging the mask in the process.

Slowly, Minato turned the sink off and he threw his brush down, grabbing the frame of the bathroom threshold as he peeked from around it and stared down the hall that led to the stairs.

Of course it wasn't odd if somebody were in his house, but only Tsunade's clones were obtrusive enough to barge into Minato's room without knocking and if it had been a Tsunade, then she undoubtedly would have kicked him out of bed. There was no way she'd miss the opportunity to do so.

Why hadn't she done it this time?

Treading with quiet steps, Minato held tight to the railing as he descended the stairway, preparing himself in case a foreign ninja managed to track him back to his home after a recent assassination. Even with all the time in the world to brace himself, nothing could have prepared him for the small orange animal that attacked his face the moment he reached the bottom step.

The former hokage was suddenly hit with a slimy, moist presence against the skin of his face and he stumbled backwards in surprise, hands shooting up to grab the creature as a reflex.

"Yo, Minato!" Came a lighthearted greeting, and when Minato yanked the animal away, he felt it struggle and writhe in between his fingers. "H-Hey! Hey! Hey! Watch it, pal! You're squeezing me way too tight!" It refuted loudly, receiving a weird stare from the male.

The familiar purple markings around the eyes, mouth and stomach gave major hints, but the voice is what gave it away and the corner of Minato's lips tugged upwards in a small smile. "Ah… it's you, Gamakichi…" He murmured, loosening his ruthless hold on the toad with an apologetic light flickering in his blue eyes. "Sorry about that, but you _did_ startle me."

"I have no regrets," the amphibian responded gleefully. He slipped out of the loose grip and hopped from Minato's hand to his shoulder, shifting a few seconds to find a comfortable position. "Though the nail marks in my skin might say otherwise. Next time I startle you, let's hope those claws have been cut, okay Tiger?"

Most of what the toad-summon said went in one ear and out the other, the blue-eyed male being too busy observing his surroundings with a tight and skeptical expression.

As a summon, it was unlikely that Gamakichi was here by himself unless he was sending a message, but Minato was positive that the toad hadn't moved his mask. Someone was here and he had a feeling that the noise from earlier might be related.

He could have been wrong about his prediction, but it was very unlikely that he was.

"Gamakichi….?" The blond muttered quietly, voice low so that he wouldn't be heard by anybody else in the house. "You're not here alone, right? Someone had to have summoned you."

The orange creature opened his mouth to answer, but was then interrupted by a lower, secretive whisper that could have been from only one man.

"Oooh, that one is pretty nice~ hehehe."

Gamakichi rolled his eyes and glanced at the blond male before shaking his head with a suppressed grin. Even Minato bit back his own smirk despite his current inner turmoil; the familiar voice was definitely something that he needed to hear, one that he hadn't heard in years. He followed it to the living room and the first thing his eyes landed on was the mop of spiky white hair.

Laying comfortably down on the couch with a magazine in hand was Minato's former teacher and toad sage, Jiraiya-Sensei. Since Minato had last seen him, there wasn't much of a difference in appearance, with the same long white hair tied in a ponytail, the green short kimono and matching pants. Besides the fact that he looked a little bit older, the old man hadn't changed much at all.

Minato came to the conclusion that the author had been the one to clean his mask, not putting that amount of selflessness past the man. However, the mask had been in his room and the thought of Jiraiya seeing him fast asleep made him cringe, recalling the non-stop teasing he always got from 'sleeping like an adorable little girl' when he had been his student.

If he really hadn't changed, he probably got a good laugh out of it as he washed the mask.

Jiraiya hadn't even noticed Minato when he walked by, or if he had, he didn't show it, continuing to mind his own business as he flipped through-Minato squinted at the book's cover-an issue of 'Shinobi Stripped~ Women in and Out of Uniform.'

Yeah, he most definitely hadn't changed.

"Oh….damn~"

Used to the man's perverted ways and actions, Minato simply stood there and decided that he would allow his former sensei to finish his research without interruption, averting his gaze from the half-naked female shinobi on the front. He hadn't looked at a woman since Kushina and was not interested in doing so now.

Instead his eyes fell to the box sitting on the ground next to the man. Written in red was the words 'secret stash #1' and Minato's cheeks flushed pink, at first believing that he had been the owner of the porn collection and trying to think back to the time he had set that up.

That is, until he looked over the familiar handwriting again and furrowed his eyebrows.

"Jiraiya-Sensei…." Minato growled under his breath in a scolding manner, realizing what the older man had done. At a crossroads between what emotion he should be feeling right now, he was caught in between a glare and a shit-eating grin.

The toad sage slowly turned his head in the blond's direction, and his eyes grew wide momentarily before he tried to save himself by laughing casually and throwing the magazine into the box which he then kicked away from him. "Minato! There you are! Hahaha, long time no see, kiddo! Am I right?" He exclaimed through gritted teeth and a forced smile that was shot right through when the younger man continued to scowl at him. "Um…..nice stash. You sure know which issues are the best to buy…."

"Except I didn't buy them," Minato retorted with an cocked eyebrow, crossing his arms over his chest. "You did and you hid the stash in my house."

Jiraiya winced, raising his hands defensively as he admitted to being caught red-handed. "Alright, kiddo. You got me. But it's for research purposes, you know this! It's the best kind of way to give me a little writing inspiration!"

From upon Minato's shoulder, Gamakichi shook his head and croaked, "you're one crusty old grandpa, Jiraiya, I swear!"

The white-haired man, feigning it or not, threw the toad a hurt look and pouted. "Crusty grandpa...? That's a little harsh, don't you think?"

"Well you did hide a porn stash in your former student's house," Minato pointed out with a slightly playful smirk. "That seems pretty crusty to me."

"Listen, kiddo-"

"Stop calling me that, Jiraiya." The blond demanded with a sharp tongue, earning a startled expression from his now dumbstruck senior. His playful smile had dropped to a straight line and his eyes had morphed into a pair of dark blue that seemed to have seen more than death itself. "You're no longer officially my sensei, but I still see you as one. However, I am no longer a kid and you shouldn't regard me as one. If you do, we may have a problem."

There was a long pause and the atmosphere filled with heavy tension as Minato and Jiraiya held each other's gazes, placid and unfazed by one another's intimidation. The only one who was breaking under the pressure was Gamakichi, who was shifting uncomfortably on Minato's shoulder, observing the two anxiously.

After a while, Jiraiya nodded in understanding and he smiled, realizing that the male before him was no longer a child, but a man who should be treated as such. It was easier said than done though when the years had been so tough on him. Jiraiya may have been away, but he still had his sources and kept in touch with Lady Tsunade often.

"You're right, Minato. You are a man now."

And he wasn't lying to please the blond. Minato was indeed a man, but he was a broken one whether he'll admit to it or not. His loss of Kushina had taken its toll on him and his own health became less and less of a priority to him. The only thing that existed to him was his mind, and his mind was his enemy, therefore he needed something to occupy him from it. Otherwise, he'd lose his sanity to his inner demons.

Jiraiya was no fool to the kind of man Minato was, he had foreshadowed it when the blond was still an academy student. He was a fine shinobi and man, but his weakness was an ugly one that unfortunately thrived on Kushina's passing.

The corners of Minato's lips tugged into a faint smile. "Thank you, Jiraiya-Sensei." With that, he turned and headed for the kitchen, but was stopped by the sound of his teacher's careful voice and grew rigid at the next word.

"Except…."

The former hokage peered over his shoulder at the man who was now sitting up straight on the couch with a genuine expression on his face. His dark and solemn eyes met with the pensive gaze of steely blue. "I think you can be a much better man, Minato."

"Of course," Minato mumbled in agreement, somewhat relaxing from the nervousness that had befallen him earlier. "As a shinobi, there's always room for improvement in all areas, no matter how strong you become. You taught me that."

Jiraiya grimaced, scratching his spiky hair when he realized that his point had not reached his ex-student. "Right….right. You're absolutely right, but that's….uh," he cleared his throat before continuing on. "...not exactly what I meant… I mean, not in general. If you catch my drift."

 _Not as a shinobi._

It seemed that Minato caught on quickly afterwards because his defense suddenly went up, Jiraiya could see it in his eyes. He could see the dim blue in his pupils brighten up and become guarded. He could see his former student's body tense and by the look Gamakichi shot him, there was no doubt that the toad had felt it too.

His next words were forced, etched with feigned strength but apparent with weak lies. "...I...I have reached the strongest I can be in that case. I'm doing all I can, Jiraiya-Sensei. I'm coping."

"But is coping really enough…?" The toad sage inquired carefully in a whisper. "That's the question that you need to answer, Minato. Do you realize that maybe that isn't enough? That maybe it's time to stop _coping_ and to start _dealing?_ "

Abruptly, Minato turned to face his teacher and it startled Jiraiya, even Gamakichi hadn't been ready for it, clinging onto the blond for dear life when he suddenly spun around. His eyes held every broken emotion that Jiraiya never thought he would see all in one place; anger, disappointment, hatred, regret, betrayal, frustration, madness, misery, and so much more.

It hurt Jiraya to see Minato wrapped up in so much despair, overshadowed by melancholy and depression yet trying to overwrite it with happiness that wasn't there in the first place.

"Dealing with it, huh…?" Minato muttered bitterly, probably more to himself than to Gamakichi or Jiraiya. He started pacing back and forth, most likely looking as if had gone mad as he whispered words under his breath over and over again.

"Coping and dealing…?"

"Coping and dealing…?"

 _What was the difference again?_

 _And which one was he doing?_

The orange toad that rested on Minato's shoulder now jumped off, finding a new spot on the backrest of the couch, watching the blond pace with concern. He could sense Minato's chakra beginning to bounce out of control and he gave the toad sage sitting closeby a questioning look to which he simply raised a finger to his lips before looking back to his junior.

"But I can't…." Minato finally whimpered, sitting on the couch beside Jiraiya and hiding his face with his hands in a defeated heap. His voice sounded broken now, weak and feeble as if on the verge of going mute forever. "I can't. I can't…."

Jiraiya stared at Minato's unmoving form for a while, trying to figure out how he should go about this. He was never the best at comforting someone, but he always tried even if it was in his own, awkward way. He reached out and offered a consoling ruffle of his messy and spiky yellow hair.

Gamakichi tilted his head sadly and hopped onto Minato's back, crawling to his shoulder to lean against him as a means of solace.

"Hey, kid-" Jiraiya grimaced, catching himself mid-word before it was too late. "Uh, Minato… I've been gone for a long, long time and you know what…? I'm wondering... how old are you now? If you don't mind me asking."

Unfortunately enough, Tsunade and practically the whole village made sure to remind Minato of how many years he had lived without Kushina by his side. Not once had they forgotten his birthday and if it weren't for them, he most definitely wouldn't know his age. He couldn't imagine not knowing how old he was, but that almost seemed like blissful ignorance because at least then he wouldn't know that he was getting old.

"Thirty-eight…." Minato murmured gloomily into the palms of his hands.

The white-haired sage whistled. "Impressive…! And you still look like you're in your twenties!" He observed the long-faced shinobi and realizing that this hadn't made him feel better at all, he frowned, continuing to ruffle the blond spiky locks as he took another route. "...Kushina wouldn't want you to live like this."

That struck a nerve and Minato lifted his head up gradually, revealing that he had been on the verge of tears that he had kept bottled up for too long. He bit down on his tongue to keep them from rolling down his cheeks and then responded with a cracked voice, "I'm just so sick of missing her. Perhaps I didn't realize it before, but I do now….she was my rock-"

"No," Jiraiya snapped sharply, slicing through his words with his stern voice. "No, she wasn't. You're your own rock, Minato. You always have been. Trust me, as your teacher, I would know! For goodness sakes, you're the Yellow Flash of the Hidden Leaf!"

"Too yellow….not enough _red_ ," the blond replied quietly, fists balling up in his lap.

The older man shook his head and placed a comforting hand on Minato's arm, reassuring him with an amiable smile. "There's no need to stain your yellow with red, Minato. Your color is strong on its own. Yellow is bright, yellow is warm and happy, and you should be too."

Minato's eyes widened with admiration in its core; though it was momentary, it was there and Jiraiya knew that his words had reached the blond. He even smiled, bigger than any smile he had cracked earlier and his face brightened. However, his next words were sugar coated with a pinch of playful sarcasm that left Jiraiya with a pout on his face. "Real nice…...really, Jiraiya-Sensei but also a little cheesy."

The pervert furrowed his eyebrows and sighed.

"I wanted to be the cool sensei with the best quote and you ruined it for me, Minato."

* * *

Jumping from tree to tree at high speeds and in a perfect three-way formation, Naruto, Hinata and Ino traveled through the forest in thoughtful silence, replaying their findings in their minds.

Dressed in full Anbu uniform; grey flak jackets, metal arm guards, swords latched to their backs, and the standard black attire underneath, the only thing that was unique about them was the white porcelain masks that hid their identities.

Naruto's gave him the code name of 'Kit' as his was that of a fox. The inside of the ears were painted black and three red whisker-like marks were on each side of his face with strips that ran down the forehead, going between the eyes and stopping before it reached the black nose.

The 'Cub' was Hinata Hyuuga, her mask resembling that of a bear. Unlike Naruto's, the Cub's ears were much more rounder and the inside was painted red. On the left side only, three red claw-like marks stretched down the face, going over the eye and stopping before the jawline.

'Rabbit' was Ino Yamanaka, each side whiskered with three black lines. With the inside of her ears painted red, her mask's eye slits were traced with red, a trail running down the cheeks from the eyes as if the bunny were crying blood.

While Naruto was pondering in the quietness of their travel, even Kurama-the Kyuubi residing inside his body- thought back on their discoveries in hopes of lending a hand with their mission, his low humming filling Naruto's mind.

After enduring many grueling years of dealing with a tailed beast that practically lived and breathed hatred-Naruto still found it hard to believe that they had actually grown to become good friends. And considering that he couldn't even recall how they learned to accept one another, sometimes he forgot that they even liked each other until the fox's causal hums or mutters of advice would echo inside of him.

Following a good ten to twenty minutes of silent nothingness, Hinata finally spoke up bashfully but loud enough to be heard in the wind of their speedy pace. "So….even other villages have shinobi disappearing suddenly. How will we go about that? Doesn't that conclude that the those villages have nothing to do with it?"

"Rabbit. Branch," Naruto warned.

Ino adjusted her Rabbit mask momentarily before dodging the oncoming branch and murmuring a thanks. She then looked to Hinata, her expression most likely tight with thought behind the false face. "...Honestly, I wouldn't say that means that a village isn't responsible. Unless the perpetrators aren't even an entire village, but a small organization or a group. All I know is that I'm getting a really bad vibe that the disappearances aren't willingly."

"I am too," Hinata muttered timeously.

Naruto narrowed his eyes at his team member's opinions, deciding that his similar assumption was worth mentioning. "These could be ninjas going rogue….maybe they're joining some group that nobody knows about...yet."

"Do you think they're doing forbidden jutsu?" Ino inquired.

"Maybe."

That was highly possible and quite a common reason for a ninja to go rogue. If they ran away or 'disappeared', nobody would know about their forbidden trainings and nobody would be around to punish them for it. The thought of forbidden jutsu and experiments left Naruto's stomach flipping every which way, especially if they were being done on innocent people kidnapped from their villages.

That is, if these people were even kidnapped in the first place. They still didn't know whether these disappearances were voluntary or not.

' _I'm sensing the presence of two shinobi coming in fast from behind on Hinata's side.'_ Kurama suddenly cautioned to the blond Kit.

Naruto glanced back at Hinata, careful to keep his steady jumping as he pulled out a kunai from his pouch. "Behind you, Cub. Guard." At these words, Ino readied herself and sped up to Naruto's side, mimicking his movements but instead placing her hand on the hilt of the sword strapped to her back.

Hinata didn't stray from her position, preparing herself to dodge the moment she heard the words. This was one of their countermeasures for enemies coming up from behind to ambush them; they were leaving Hinata 'vulnerable' and feigning ignorance in order to pull off a surprise attack.

In other words, they were leaving her as bait to lure the enemy out.

' _...wait, Kit!'_

The startled growl from Kurama mixed in with the ruffle of trees almost had Naruto sending his kunai right at his own teammates. Luckily, he had managed to stop his fingers before they released their grip on the tool, earning a relieved grunt from the nine tails inside of him.

Sai and Sakura suddenly jumped into the formation with ease, becoming the two to trail behind Hinata and Ino when she returned to her position.

Naruto sighed in relief, grateful that it was his friends and not an enemy ninja trying to pick a fight with foreign shinobi. With everything that was going on and the extremely confusing situation that only became even more mind blowing with every clue they got, he wasn't really in the mood for a fight.

"Sakura... Sai….! You scared us! Naruto almost attacked you both!" Hinata exclaimed, less apprehensive than she usually sounded.

"Cub!" Ino snapped in a teacher's tone before either Sai or Sakura could muster up a response to the Hyuuga. "Maintain code names. We have them for a good reason."

Hinata covered the mouth of her bear mask as if she were belatedly trying to stop herself from saying the names of her teammates. "Sorry..." She whimpered remorsefully.

Like everybody else, Sakura and Sai were dressed in the standard Anbu attire as well, both sporting a mask that associated them with their code name out on the field.

Sai was Crow; two squiggly red marks waved down diagonally from his forehead and halfway to the slitted holes of his eyes which, like Ino's Rabbit, were outlined in a blood red that resembled bleeding eyes. The beak of the mask stuck out, but only slightly and where it would have opened up, a black line was drawn to emphasize its mouth.

Sakura was a Dingo, much to Ino's amusement. The ears of the mask were white and not colored in, but between the ears was a blue triangle which covered part of the forehead, the tip of it stopping somewhere close to the middle. Two more of the same shape were on either side of the face, vertex in to end on the cheek of the mask. There were no whiskers, but a nose and mouth were lightly drawn on the snout to make the canine known.

"Have anything interesting to report?" Naruto inquired to the two at the back of the formation.

The pink-haired Anbu member wasted no time, responding almost immediately after the last word was spoken. "Gaara confirmed our suspicions. He also has disappearances occurring in the Hidden Sand."

"Even merchants have seconded the notion. They've overheard talk of other villages going through the same thing," Sai added.

Naruto bit his bottom lip from behind his fox mask, eyebrows furrowing in puzzled confliction as he picked up his pace. This was most definitely weird, but urgent, especially if any village could become a target of whoever or _whatever_ was doing this.

' _What are you thinking, Kit?'_ The Nine-Tailed beast murmured lowly to the blond male that he occupied. _'Perhaps the work of some newly formed underground organization?'_

' _I honestly don't know what to think, Kurama,'_ Naruto whispered to the fox in his mind. _'If that's true, then they must be a large organization if they're managing to kidnap so many people in such a small amount of time.'_

Before the beast could offer more input, Sai spoke up once more and broke the short-lived silence between the group. "I think the first thing we need to consider is; are these disappearances kidnappings or are these shinobi leaving for a purpose of some sort…"

"But... how do we figure that out?" Hinata asked meekly. "Snooping around doesn't seem to be doing us any good at the moment. We're still at the same place."

The dark-haired ninja shook his head in disagreement. "No, we're getting somewhere. Just not at a pleasing pace."

"But we can't keep depending on snooping," Ino pointed out, reminding the Anbu team of the unsteady relationships between everyone of their land. "Not all villages are friendly enough with us to overlook our visits. We'll be watched, maybe ambushed-and that's assuming they let us even come near their village."

Naruto knew that Ino had a good point and the only thing that would make this mission harder, aside from the brain-busting thinking, would be to have enemies surrounding them and picking fights every five seconds because they were foreign shinobi.

He glanced over his shoulder at his teammates, unknown to them that he had large grin plastered on his face at the thought of disguising himself to get into a village. "I guess we'll have to be sneaky about it then."

Sakura seemed to catch on to his meaning automatically because she countered quickly after. "Naru-" She sucked in an annoyed breath as she remembered that they were Anbu members known by code names, and then said sharply, "-Kit. That could be extremely dangerous."

"Danger comes with the job, Dingo~" Naruto murmured, still grinning madly at the thought of putting his sexy jutsu to work. Perhaps it was time that Naruko got a little breather anyway. It's been far too long and he shouldn't have allowed such a great move to collect dust.

A thundering vibration of deep chuckles echoed in the blond's mind and he raised an eyebrow at the sound of Kurama's laughter.

' _Dingo….'_ The fox repeated, followed by his rumbling snickering.

Naruto rolled his eyes with a hint of playfulness, his grin growing wider. _'Dingo is a type of dog, Kurama. It isn't an insult.'_

' _It sounds like one.'_ The Nine-Tailed creature answered back, obviously disappointed that the kid had to go and ruin the funny thought. ' _It fits her well…She is indeed a Dingo.'_

' _You're a hater.'_

' _I'm not hating. I simply prefer the blond girl with the Rabbit mask to Dingo.'_

The sound of Ino's voice pulled Naruto from his internal conversation and brought him back to reality. "The Leaf is just up ahead. I think when we get there, we should go straight to Lady Tsunade and report this in. What we learned is a bit….vital."

Naruto almost wanted to whine and retort that they should stop by Ramen Ichiraku first and order a few bowls because they deserved it for working so hard, but a sudden pounding in his head stopped him from doing so.

He heard Kurama release a pained growl that was followed by a low groan. _'Ugh….not this. Not this….this chakra again.'_

With the splitting headache that left his vision spinning in a blur, Naruto could feel an intense pain growing inside his stomach that resided right where the seal was located. The extreme discomfort had him coming to a sudden halt, stopping on the next branch he landed on in hopes of catching the breath he didn't remember losing.

"Naruto!" Sakura called out, more concerned with her friend's health than Anbu regulations. She and the others had stopped a tree or two ahead, but now doubled back to the blue-eyed male, crowding around him.

' _Kurama…?'_ The second the blond asked and tried to reach out to Kurama, the headache only intensified and the stomach pain grew tenfold, almost resulting in him falling from the tree had Sai and Ino not steadied him.

He held his stomach and slouched forward as if ready to vomit, squeezing his eyes shut in order to cope with the pain as he searched for the fox inside his mind.

' _Kurama…!'_

' _Ugh….'_ The fox groaned, a pained mixture of disgust and agony slipping off his tongue. _'It's that presence again. His chakra….it's out of control. He's awake and it's out of control, Kit...'_

' _Who is….?'_

Naruto was completely lost. He had no idea who Kurama was referring to and the fierce amount of torment he was feeling; the throbbing headache, the pulsing of his seal, it was making him see spots of red and black, and black and purple.

And purple and green with flashes of brown.

And then suddenly there was only yellow- a yellow flash with blue. A sad sort of blue-like the kind of blue that you see when you've lost someone important to you.

Naruto blinked.

He was seeing a person. He was seeing that person again. The one that he dreamt about almost every night; the one with the yellow hair and the sad sort of blue eyes. The one who smiles at him only for a little bit until he mutters that he _doesn't_ want to see him.

 _That he wants to be left alone._

Suddenly the face distorted away and Naruto was falling, cutting through air like he was the heaviest thing in the world. The brown in his vision were the trees as he fell, warping and blurring as he closed the space between him and the ground with every second that passed.

As soon as Naruto came to the terrible realization that it will be a bloody, bone-snapping, sickening splat against the earth if he doesn't do something soon, he suddenly felt weightless instead of heavy. Arms had him feeling secured and they pressed him up against the fabric of an Anbu uniform.

Then he was on the ground and Sai was in his vision, removing his mask before pulling away Naruto's and examining him with the most emotion-filled features Naruto has ever seen on the guy's face in his life.

Hinata, Sakura and Ino are soon joining him, regarding the blond with concerned frowns, having thrown their masks to the side as well.

"Naruto! Naruto, are you okay?" Hinata asked softly, her deeply defined and muddled eyes looking down at him solicitously.

"I said not to move, didn't I, idiot?" Sakura reprimanded sternly, eyes narrowing and becoming ablaze with fury. "That's what you get... you freaking idiot!" Though her voice is tight, it still remained etched with concern that she was obviously choking back. She disappeared from his view, getting up to walk away and Hinata, after shooting Naruto a fretful look, followed after her with a feeble, "S-Sakura!"

Sai and Ino exchanged glances, and the blonde rolled her eyes in the direction of her pink-haired rival before reaching out to brush the back of her hand against Naruto's forehead. "You're a little warm…..and sweaty." She spoke the last word with slight disgust that was rewarded with a weak laugh from the male.

"I'm fine…" He groaned, attempting to sit up from Sai's lap before two worried pairs of hands pushed him back down a little too hard. "-hey!"

"Are you positive that you're okay?" The raven-haired artist asked.

Ino bobbed her head in agreement to Sai's question, keeping her hand firmly planted on Naruto's chest. "Yeah. You tried to jump, but when you did you just suddenly lost consciousness and fell."

"I'm fine!"

Or so he wanted to believe.

The fact that Kurama seemed to have sensed something that sent both of them into a fit of pain startled him a bit. And it didn't help that the man that always appeared in his dreams just suddenly invaded his mind before he lost consciousness, but the pain was gone. The seal was no longer tight with heat and the although the headache was still there, it was acute and had subdued quite a bit.

He would mention this to Grandma Tsunade later, but it wasn't the main priority at the moment and he did not want to hinder the mission any further.

When he forcefully pulled free from Ino and Sai's grasp, he met with the cold glare of Sakura Haruno, who already had her mask in hand as if ready to go. She narrowed her eyes at him before putting it on and becoming Dingo once again. "Let him play hero, Ino. Let's go." She said bitterly, gone and into the trees in seconds.

Ino looked to Naruto carefully as if trying to gauge his health, but then shook herself free from it, lifting her Rabbit mask to her face before she too, had disappeared into the greens.

Hinata offered the two boys left behind a reassuring smile. "Come on, guys." And then she too was gone, leaving Sai and Naruto standing together quietly.

The pale ninja turned to the blond with piercing dark eyes, mouth tight. "Naruto."

"I saw him again, Sai. Right before I fainted…."

Though it was a very subtle movement, Sai's eyes widened slightly and he opened his mouth to speak, but he stopped as if deciding against saying what he planned to. Instead, after a long pause, he simply put his Crow mask back on and said, "...let's go."

Naruto nodded, lifting his own mask to his face and then following Sai into the trees. As they leaped from branch to branch, he silently sunk back into his mindscape to speak with the tailed beast.

' _Kurama…?'_ He asked, almost as timidly as Hinata would have.

' _Yes…?"_

' _Are you alright?'_

' _I am fine,'_ The fox replied quietly, voice distant as if lost in thought. _'I was just startled.'_

* * *

Tsunade pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed, squeezing her eyes shut wearily as she leaned back in her chair to take a breather from the stack of reports sitting in front of her. She had been hokage for so long, but never had she felt so intimidated by a pile of papers in her life until now. Perhaps it was also the source of her rampaging headache.

Or maybe it was because she was getting old-and the mere thought of that made her want to send a clone after Minato and have it suffocate him in his sleep for looking to her to take over as hokage when he became unfit to lead after Kushina's death. While he made the best decision he could for the village despite his status, she was much too old for this and one day, she was going to drown him in all of her reports.

The murderous idea playing in her mind brought her bliss.

A couple of soft knocks at the door snapped the woman out of her revengeful daydream and she straightened up in her seat and quickly started organizing the semi-messy stack on her desk. Her eyes caught the word 'marriage' and she squinted at the proposal in her hand, clicked her tongue and groaned before scooting it in with the other papers and calling out, "come in! The door is open."

She hoped that the five shinobi sauntering into her office didn't hear her mumbling inaudibly under her breath about how annoying it was to deal with arranged marriage offers.

While she understood its purposes, as breeding strong ninjas with other strong ninjas usually resulted in genetically strong offspring, she disliked summoning the clan's shinobi into her office and then hearing the awkward, "well I'm planning on getting married to another man soon," or the unnecessary, "I already have a baby on the way….hahaha! My apologizes, Lady Hokage."

It never upset her that she had to decline most of the offers-arranged marriage sounded shitty, in her opinion anyway-it merely annoyed her that other villages were not taking the hint. The Leaf wasn't used to forcing other clans to mix and despite the large amount of vetoed proposals due to love already being found, they never failed to keep hounding the village about it.

When Tsunade pushed her internal rant, along with the stack of reports to the side, she looked up a met with a pair of lively blue eyes that belonged to the grinning blond male who was leaning forward on her desk excitedly. Too close for comfort, she nonchalantly scooted back in her chair and crossed her arms over her busty chest with a sigh.

"Grandma Tsunade!"

"Naruto…." She responded, rolling her eyes at the name that she was still not used to. To make it known, she even cocked an eyebrow at the boy and burned daggers into his smiling face with her glare. She may have been older, but she was not old enough to be labeled grandma!

Okay, maybe she was. But she still looked too good for the nickname, honestly.

Naruto had long removed his Anbu mask from his face and now stepped back with his squad. Unlike the rest of his team, they didn't pull off their masks and were less 'jumpy' than the blond, much more accustomed and collected when it came to the solemn Anbu lifestyle.

Tsunade had gotten used to remembering who was behind what mask based on the code names given, depending on what animal they sported. The dark haired male on the very left was Sai, his pale face that was most likely void of any emotion, hidden behind his Crow mask. The girl bouncing nervously on her toes behind the Bear mask was 'Cub' otherwise known as Hinata Hyuuga; she was the one most furthest away from Tsunade's desk, most likely doing it out of respect.

Or intimidation.

The short pink hair was hard to miss and difficult to forget. Sakura Haruno wore the canine Dingo mask; she had her hands clasped behind her back, seemingly trying to ignore the obvious glare that the blond female next to her, Ino Yamanaka, was sending her from behind her Rabbit mask.

This anbu squad in particular never failed to amaze her and sensing the intense rivalry radiating off of Dingo and Rabbit, she figured it was best to get them both out of her office as fast as possible before they made her headache worse.

The fifth hokage sat back in her chair and looked to Naruto expectantly, glancing back and forth between the mask in his hand and his grinning face. "Status Report, _Kit_." She spoke the last word through her teeth, emphasizing the code name to remind the blond of his current job.

"Hnnn!" Naruto squeaked, frantically attempting to throw his Kit mask back on, only to end up fumbling with it when he didn't fasten it on correctly and it fell from his face.

Sitting there with an amused smile, Tsunade watched as an angered Sakura balled her fists and stomped forward in annoyance, shoving her friend back before bowing to the hokage apologetically. "Ignore the idiot fox, Lady Hokage," she said, winning a defeated groan from Kit as she straightened up to report her team's findings. "Report on the mission regarding the repeated cases of missing ninja in the vicinity. During our trek towards the Village Hidden in the Cloud, we came across a few merchants who-"

Suddenly Ino chimed in, cutting her off sharply. "What are you doing? Just start from the beginning, don't confuse the Hokage! Say everything in chronological order, stupid Dingus! Don't you think she has enough to deal with already?"

"Dingo!" Sakura countered, apparently finding it more important to address her childhood rival rather than to report in as she turned away from Tsunade to face Rabbit. "It's Dingo! Stop with the damn Dingus, Ino-Pig!"

"Well maybe I'd stop calling you a _Dingus_ if you stopped _acting_ like one!" Ino retorted, raising her voice louder than Sakura's this time. She had stepped forward now and Sakura retaliated equally, both of them butting masks and most likely seething angrily behind them.

As if used to this already, Naruto peered in Sai's direction from behind his porcelain Kit-face and the two shared a silent agreement that had them moving only seconds afterwards. Naruto behind Sakura and Sai behind Ino, they both grabbed a hold of the girls by the waist and pulled them apart just before they could reach the dangerous hair-tugging and face-smacking phase.

"Ino-PIG!"

The blond kunoichi glared daggers at the pink-haired ninja before her struggling grew stronger and more difficult for Sai to manage. Even his mask fell off in the process. "I'm getting REAL tired of that remark! You're the one who's pink like a pig anyway, Saku-DINGUS!"

"Okay, okay," Naruto pleaded softly, almost trying to laugh it off with causal haha's. "Let's just report in to Grandma Tsunade, guys-!"

"SHUT UP, DUMB NARUTO!" Both Ino and Sakura shouted simultaneously, this probably being one of the few things that they could actually agree on for once. But then the realization that they had thought something and said it at the same time left them eyeing on another from afar.

"I hate your face!" Sakura declared.

"I hate your face more, cow!"

"GOOD! MY FACE DOESN'T EVEN LIKE YOU!"

"MY FACE NEVER LIKED YOU!"

A little awkward laugh had everyone silently turning to Sai who had on one of those stupid smirks that never failed to worry everyone. Aware of the kind of things the shinobi would say due to his past training, the female Hokage could only pray that he was not about to utter something that would rile up the two further and induce more arguing.

She wasn't betting on it though, considering the numerous times she tried praying for less paperwork only to be disappointed when the secretary walked in with a stack large enough to make a flat chest kunoichi bustier than her.

Tsunade rested an elbow on her desk and caressed her head, mentally preparing herself for more yelling, followed by a chorus of multiple things snapping and shattering that would probably give her a full on migraine.

"If it makes you both feel better, my face hates both of your faces equally~" Sai said in a delighted tone as if proud of his words.

Hinata covered her mouth in horror.

Naruto groaned at the sight of both Ino and Sakura staring at Sai as they processed the insult, and Tsunade suppressed a groan of her own because she knew what would happen once the words echoed enough in their heads.

She came to the conclusion that this would result in broken furniture and the need to call Sai a medical-nin once they broke his bones.

She reluctantly braced herself for an angry woman's choir consisting only of Ino and Sakura with Sai as a screaming guest star (assuming they didn't kill him on the first swing) and silently prayed to the first, second and third Hokages to spare her the headache. Maybe even protect her furniture while they were at it-and as if her plea was answered, the door suddenly swung open and Ino halted her attempted assault on the smug-looking Sai, balled fist only inches from his smiling face.

Tsunade tiled her head and peered past the Anbu team to be greeted by a familiar spiky messy of white hair that she hadn't seen in years. Though not feeling like dealing with the pervert, she was grateful to the Toad Sage for saving her from dealing with the bickering squad and hailed him with a small smile. "Hello, Jiraiya. It's been awhile."

"Lady Tsunade~" The older man bowed swiftly before returning her smile with one of his wicked signature smirks as he scanned the surroundings of the room. "It's been too long….years, actually yet this boring office still looks the same…." His eyes landed on the young blond wearing the Kit Fox mask with his arms still wrapped around Sakura and his grin grew wider than before. "Oh. Is that little Naruto I spy?"

"Pervy Sage!" Naruto exclaimed, releasing his hold on his friend to rush over to the man who he had been the apprentice of years ago. "You recognized me from behind this mask?" He probed with awe, pulling the porcelain material from his face and almost blinding everyone with the giddy excitement that radiated from his sparkling blue eyes.

Dumbfounded, Jiraiya blinked as if caught off guard by the question and Tsunade couldn't resist rolling her eyes, realizing that he had only guessed that it was Naruto. He scratched the back of his head, laughing lightheartedly. "Hahaha….well…"

Completely ignoring the author's awkwardness, Naruto grabbed a hold of the front folds of Jiraiya's red vest and tugged excitedly. "I bet you didn't think I would end up working as an Anbu-nin, did ya? Huh? Huh, Pervy Sage?"

"Naruto, calm down." Sakura growled from behind her Dingo mask. "Act your age for once."

"Is that little Sakura too?" Jiraiya inquired jovially, having turned towards the familiar, but more grown voice of the pink-haired kunoichi who removed her mask, revealing blushing cheeks that made the sage go hysteric. "Awww! Stop growing!" He cried, comically throwing his hands up into the air ruefully. "I swear all the little cuties are all grown up now and it's making me feel like I'm a hundred years old!"

Tsunade's jaw tightened at the abashed words of Jiraiya, not finding comfort in them considering that she was around the same age as the man herself. "Speak for yourself," she chimed with an unintentional pout. Wanting to change the subject, she leaned forward and addressed the Anbu team once more through gritted teeth. "Now about that report that we never finished..."

She shot them her signature glare which only seemed to affect Hinata and Naruto who both grew rigid under her stern gaze.

The blond Jinchuriki cleared his throat before coming from the excited high of seeing his old teacher and stepping forward sheepishly. "I'll…. uh, give the report. Sorry," he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck with an awkward smile and then straightening up, becoming stern-faced. "So in the case of the sudden disappearances, we first traveled to the village Hidden in the Sand to speak with the fifth Kazekage and Gaara reported that he too has heard cases of Sand-nins disappearing out of nowhere but he has-"

"Good morning, Lord Fourth."

"Ah...hello."

Naruto stopped his report abruptly and turned towards the doorway with widened eyes. Everyone followed suit, and despite the fact that the report had been interrupted once again, Tsunade was unable to hide her smile.

"Hello, Fourth!"

"Hi…"

"Fourth! Good morning! I hope you slept well!"

"I did…Thank you."

Tsunade raised her eyebrows and the corners of her lips tugging upward only served to make her smile grow a little bigger. She couldn't remember the last time she had heard that voice sounding anything, but aloof when it came to speaking with other villagers. "Wow. Color me impressed, Jiraiya," she murmured, the tone of her words splattered with respect.

The Sage looked to her and grinned. "It was easier said than done, trust me."

After a few more friendly responses to the affable villagers, a blond man dressed in the standard Konoha uniform came walking into the room and he froze automatically due to the stares he was receiving; the wicked grin of his perverted ex-sensei, the awe-filled expressions of the Anbu members when they respectfully removed their masks, the blushing pink-haired shinobi, the smiling Tsunade, and the….-horrified?- blond standing by the hokage's desk with his mouth slightly agape.

He scratched the top of his spiky blond hair and his forced smile sported a most likely unintentional funny-looking face. "Sorry. Did I interrupt something?"

In the silence that only consisted of Jiraiya laughing at the blond's-at Minato's face, Tsunade peered carefully in Naruto's direction, studying his reaction to the father he never knew. There was no indication of recognizing his own blood standing right before him, but that was not surprising when Naruto had only seen him as an infant anyway.

And even despite the strong resemblance of Kushina that Naruto exhibited in his features; the large eyes, the rounder head, the more feminine face, Minato showed no acknowledgement of the boy as his son.

They just….stared at each other. Naruto looking horrified and Minato probably wondering why.

While Tsunade felt bad that neither of the two realized how close they were to the family that they should have had, she was relieved that the seal that had been implanted into Naruto as a child hadn't broke at the sight of Minato or the feeling of his chakra.

It was a double-edged sword, but in the case of the seal breaking and Naruto realizing who Minato was to him, there was no doubt in her mind that things would end nasty. And the spiteful Tailed Beast being inside him didn't make the situation any better.

Things would have to be sorted out without that seal coming undone.

Jiraiya glanced in kunoichi's direction, cocking an eyebrow while the Anbu team bombarded the former hokage with questions and words of admiration, but she didn't even notice. She was too busy watching the silent Naruto who had stayed behind with a slightly saddened look on her face.

The whiskered-male just eyed the blond, as if there were some part of a puzzle that he was missing. Tsunade could only think that perhaps he was getting a gut feeling, that maybe he felt like he knew Minato from somewhere but couldn't quite place him.

"Remember what we talked about?" The pervert inquired quietly after having snuck away from excited group of teens to address the fifth hokage.

Tsunade nodded thoughtfully, eyeing the squad from afar. "I do. Change of plans. I think this little set up is absolutely perfect. Naruto and his team aren't the most cooperative anyway..."

"We were thinking the same thing then," Jiraiya whispered in playful sin.

"Minato."

The mentioned blond looked away from his group of admirers and turned to the sound of his name, his smile facade reverting back to the stony expression he usually wore. "Yes?"

"You're here for your next mission, am I right?" The older woman asked.

"Yes…" Minato replied quietly, blue eyes narrowing and lips becoming tight as he studied the grinning faces of the Hokage and the Toad Sage standing before him. His gaze flickered elsewhere momentarily, trying to ignore the giddy intimidation seeping from them. "You know that I only want S-Rank missions. Just….anything that is difficult."

Tsunade's eyes glistened with excitement and she noticed the way it startled the younger man, making his eyebrows furrow in confliction. "Anything that is _difficult…_." She repeated, tongue playing wickedly on the last word.

Minato stared at her with a guarded expression.

"Congratulations, oh- mighty Yellow Flash~! You're the winner of the newest S-Rank mission! Better get your Anbu Gear ready and prepare to join the dark side, Buntaicho!" Jiraiya sang, shooting his former student a shit-eating grin.

It took Minato a few long seconds to catch on and the silence was one of the most awkwardest things Tsunade had ever endured, but as soon as he did, his mouth fell open. And she had to admit that his priceless face was definitely worth seeing.

"B-Buntaicho?" He sputtered. "As in….squad leader?"

"That's right, Namikaze-sensei~. You're going to teach everyone how to properly function on a team in order to avoid unnecessary arguments that could possibly be detrimental to the mission." Tsunade wiggled a finger towards the group of Anbu members standing by the doorway. "And you have just met all your newest squad members."

Sakura stepped forward and raised her hand as if she needed to in order to speak. "So, Lady Fifth….you think that we need help with our teamwork…?"

There was a sad, almost disappointed look flickering in her eyes and Tsunade's smile faltered under it, sighing quietly before responding softly. "This team wasn't formed by the normal regulations, usually they go based off of skills, strengths and weaknesses. You are an….oddball squad, but I believe you all can work well together with a little help." She then gestured to Minato who had grown silent, eyes cast down. "Which is where Namikaze comes in."

"Just a heads up; Sakura is the one who needs to most work," Ino growled with a condescending raise of her eyebrows, grinning when her pink-haired nemesis shot her a nasty glare.

"Ino, I _swear_."

"Oh, you actually heard me. Oops."

Hinata had a warm smile on her face, completely ignoring the two hotheaded kunoichis scowling at each other nearby. "I think having an actual team leader sounds fun! Don't you think, Naruto?"

After Tsunade, one by one, everyone's gaze landed on the jinchuuriki who had been staring at the ground, blue eyes void of any presence. Almost immediately Naruto noticed this and he blinked, looking to everyone before throwing on his brightest smile. "Heh~ Of course! I mean-being trained by the fourth Hokage? That sounds amazing!" He grinned at the older blond, coming on a little stronger than usual-Tsunade noted. Perhaps it was a forced grin. "You should teach us crazy hokage techniques!"

"I agree," Sai piped up with a smile. "Should we call you Minato-Sensei? Namikaze-Sensei? Maybe just Squad Leader or Captain?"

"Don't call me any of those!"

His growling bite left a cold chill in the air and everyone stiffened at the sudden change of the man who walked into the room, a completely different person than the one who now radiated unfriendly bitterness and unapproachable malice. Even Sai's smile dropped.

Tsunade furrowed her eyebrows at the man standing in front of her and her next words became tight like the tone of a mother scolding her son. "Minato. There was no need to snap at anybody."

The former Hokage looked up, only allowing her and Jiraiya to bear witness to the transformation before them. Those same sad blue eyes surfaced once again; the eyes of someone who had lost somebody dear to them, the eyes of someone who was broken beyond repair.

The eyes of someone who had lost in wife and failed to protect his village sixteen years ago.

Tsunade remembered that look all too well and seeing it again made her stomach drop.

"I'm sorry," He replied quietly, defeat and anguish etched in his voice. "Just don't make me responsible for the lives of others when I can't protect _anybody_."

And with that, the Yellow Flash disappeared.

* * *

 **A/N: Neh. Neh? NEH? O.O sorry that not everything has been explained yet. But that's the point ;) More explanations in ch.2.**

 **If you liked it, please let me know! I worked hard on this, literally the longest chapter I've ever wrote for a story, reaching 10,919 words without the A/N's! And it was hard considering this is the first time I've written for this fandom. I hope you enjoyed it so far! Reviews make me want to update faster~ :D**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Sorry this chapter took so long to get up! I did have summer school and it honestly tired me out~ And then when I actually tried to finish this chapter, my laptop decided "NOPE." And here I am on my dad's laptop ;-; Anyway ignore me. Just read that's what you're here for!**

* * *

With all the smoke surrounding him, it made it much harder for Minato to catch his breath when it was already difficult enough with his depleted energy.

Nothing had went as planned when it came to Kushina's birth and it was beginning to take its toll on his body. From the first cries from their newborn son to now, Minato was constantly on his toes as not only had the Nine Tails been pulled from it's jinchuuriki, but it was attacking the village and the masked man who was behind it was keeping him from intervening against it.

The Fourth Hokage stood up, spying the masked man with his sharp blue eyes the moment the smoke cleared enough for him to be spotted.

Holding his damaged arm, the masked man straightened up and stood tall, disregarding being hit with the powerful Rasengan. "You got me," he said in a voice that didn't sound as dazzled as his words seemed. "Impressive. I would be lying if I said that move wasn't at least a little bit painful on impact. You live up to your name, Yellow Flash. You are indeed fast."

Minato's expression tightened and he narrowed his eyes, the ocean in them becoming dark. He wasn't too surprised that the man knew his nickname when he had been known to many non-leaf ninja as the 'Flee-on-Sight' shinobi-The Yellow Flash-in his days before becoming Hokage.

And if he had somehow figured out the confidential location where Kushina was to give birth, then it shouldn't be shocking that he knew other things as well.

The sudden piercing sound of an splenetic roar had Minato's attention going elsewhere and he was met with the horrific sight of the Tailed Fox, now free from Kushina, raining catastrophic hatred and hell upon his home village. The beast was swinging his tails every which way, destroying buildings and smashing houses. His teeth bared viciously when he snarled, revealing his sharp whites when he was hit by the intervening shinobi before slashing his claws at them in counter.

The fox had a darkness in his eyes that Minato didn't find normal and he would have stared longer had time been on his side.

"Worried about your precious people and your village, Lord Hokage?" The question wrenched the blond from his train of thought and pulled his attention back to the masked man. "Whatever happened to keeping your eyes on your enemy at all times? Isn't that an important battlefield rule for a shinobi to know? Look at me. I am your opponent."

Indeed he was. He was the one who had started this chaos. He was the one who had put Minato's family, his people, his village in danger so he _was_ his opponent. But so was the tailed beast who was wreaking havoc upon his home.

He was beginning to find it almost impossible to keep his eyes on one or the other.

He could hear Kushina's frail voice in the back of his head, ringing in his mind like a shaky plea to protect something precious to her. _"M-Minato…. the Nine Tails and the masked man…..they're heading for the village. Stop them…."_

Stopping them was the plan.

The Fox Beast's head tilted upwards, jaw opening as a purple ball begun to form at its mouth. It was going to do another Tailed Beast Ball, the attack it had launched earlier at the Hokage Monument. The damage it caused was dangerously huge and Minato knew he couldn't allow the attack to go through this time either.

He lifted up his hands to ready his shadow clone jutsu.

~16 years ago~

Minato was aware that his chakra reserves weren't the biggest, but he held enough to follow through with his plan even if it left him running low in the end.

Before the Tailed Fox could finish preparing his Beast Ball, Minato was there, quick as a flash and summoning the chief toad, Gamabunta. The surrounding shinobi jumped back from the area as the large toad landed on the fox, shoving its head into the earth with his enormous webbed feet.

With his clone facing off with the masked man elsewhere, Minato was truly being tested, never having distanced himself so far from a shadow clone locked in combat before. Still he knew he had his own battle to face here and the struggling grunt from Gamabunta brought him back from his worrying mind. "Minato…! You better hurry!" He cautioned, his body quivering in the struggle to hold the beast under him down. "I don't think I can keep this thing down for long!"

The blond bit back his own hesitation and he leaped down from Gamabunta's head to land on the Fox's. He crouched low and pressed his hand into the fur of the multi-tailed animal, summoning up the large amount of chakra he knew would be needed to teleport such a big creature.

This would no doubt burn a huge hole in his reserves, but he saw no better option than to get this beast as far away from the village as possible.

With his Flying Thunder God technique, he transported himself and the beast away.

~16 Years Ago~

Minato's breathing was much more labored than it had been earlier, resulting from not only his exhaustion of chakra from facing the masked man and teleporting the Nine Tails, but from teleporting Kushina and Naruto as well.

After returning to the Beast's location, Kushina and Naruto in his arms, he pitched forward onto wobbly knees and nearly dropped them both in the process.

Kushina was just as spindly, maybe more, on the verge of dying from the extraction of the fox from her body. Her voice was husky and unsteady, sounding so cracked that it seemed like it hurt for her to even talk. Though it was obvious that she was trying to grin at him, she instead regarded him with a sad smile that withered his insides. "Are you…..okay, Minato?"

Minato didn't answer right away. In fact, he didn't answer at all. He could feel her body shuddering in his arms as he slowly pulled back from his wife, allowing her to sit upright on her own. Seeing her weak form, he was finally coming to the reality that his lover was dying.

Kushina, his love-and the mother of his child was _dying_.

The thought left his temper palpitating inside his stomach, but the angsty feeling bubbling in his chest had his teeth chattering from inside his clamped jaw. His heart was pounding louder than it ever had been before, thundering in his ears and the loss of control he now acknowledged only served to unsettle him further.

Minato lowered his head and squeezed his eyes shut, completely forgetting about the situation at hand to confront his own inner turmoil. His free hand, holding his body up, now balled into an angry fist and his fingers constricted around a few unlucky strands of grass. He gritted his teeth and sucked in his need to scream at the sky out of frustration.

This was _not_ like him.

He was usually so calm and collected on the battlefield, rarely one to lose his cool when things got tough. He was never this out of control before and the feeling of not being in control was beginning to make him anxious.

As Hokage, there were so many things for him to worry about, some many problems that he had to address. _The Tailed Beast, the village, the masked man, Naruto, Kushina-_

The little blond bundle pressed to his chest began to writhe in his arms and snapped Minato out of his internal conflict, letting out loud cries that were similar to those the boy had made at his birth. His baby sobs were boisterous enough to grab the attention of the fox behind them and Kushina turned to it when she heard its ground-quaking growls.

"Minato…." She warned breathlessly.

Little Naruto was turned over to her and she looked up to meet with a pair of strong eyes as blue as the various waterfalls that could be found outside of the Leaf village.

"I'll stop him," the fourth Hokage whispered in a low, breathy voice that was stone cold and firm. He looked down at the whiskered boy in her arms and ran a thumb across his cheeks, radiating some of his warm chakra to his finger, an action that surprisingly calmed Naruto to quiet sobs. "No matter what it takes. There are things I must protect and I won't give up as long as I have them."

Pushing himself up to his feet, Minato found it a little difficult to stand with his low chakra status. His body had never felt so heavy. Still, he managed it nonetheless and turned to face the piercing gaze of the Tailed Beast before him, straightening his back to hide the unsteadiness of his stature only to feel his sleeve get tugged on weakly.

Though it was hard to admit to himself, Minato saw that the light in Kushina's eyes were getting dim but still held the fire of the red hot habanero in them, filled with determination that he was happy to see when he turned to her. She gazed down at her son only for a few seconds before looking up at him and flashing a beautiful smile. "I have things I must protect too, you know…!"

With a pained cry, Kushina summoned her chains and they sprouted from her back like wings lurching forward to wrap around the Tailed Beast. The chakra chains found its limbs, its tails, its torso and its neck, pulling down to slam the monster to the ground violently.

Albeit it had been helpful to restrain the beast, Minato almost wished she hadn't done it the moment he heard her hack painfully as a result of pushing her already exhausted body. She coughed twice more and slumped forward, grip loosening around the quiet Naruto.

In a flash, Minato was on his knees and by her side again, placing his hands on her shoulder blades to support her. "Kushina, don't be so rash!" He growled, almost as if scolding her for making such a decision on her own. "You probably shouldn't have done that in your state..."

Kushina let out a breathless laugh before her eyes squeezed shut as if trying to endure the pain she had brought upon herself.

She stayed this way for a couple of long seconds and it worried Minato more with each second that passed. Arms quaking under her own weight, she opened her eyes soon after to meet his concerned pools of blue and smiled at him reassuringly. "It's okay, Minato. I can take him with me to my death. That way the interval before he emerges again is delayed… It's all I can do with my remaining chakra."

Despite her inclined tone, her eyes grew watery and her voice cracked as she spoke her next words. "T-Thank you...for _everything_."

With an expression tight with enmity and grief, Minato gritted his teeth bitterly and he hung his head as he reached out to grab Kushina's shoulders. As if he had all the time in the world, he remained in that stance for what felt like minutes before pulling the woman into a lovingly warm embrace. His fingers found her crimson hair and he took in the scent of her shampoo, turning his head and burying his face into the strands.

"It was you…." He whispered into her red hair, choking back the sobs that he so desperately wanted to release despite the shinobi rule that looked down upon showing weakness when faced with danger. In favor, he focused on telling the Uzumaki what he wanted her to know before she left this world. "You're the one, Kushina. You made me who I am today. You made me a man, a Hokage, a father…..you made me happy. But I couldn't…." his voice trailed off and faded into the dead of night, unable to say what was sitting on the tip of his tongue.

 _But I couldn't protect you._

Even if he did manage to save Konoha, Kushina had already been lost the moment he allowed that masked man to take her. Minato should have been extra careful about the location of Kushina's child labor, but he hadn't been and the information was leaked.

Naruto was going to grow up without his mother.

He had failed both his wife _and_ his son, leaving him to wonder what kind of man he was.

Kushina's trembling body relaxed into Minato's embrace and she fell limp into his chest, still holding the calm Naruto who was wedged between their bodies. Being in his arms reminded her of when they were kids, when he had rescued her from being kidnapped and carried her back to the village when she had fell from exhaustion. The memory made her _smile_. And it made her _cry_.

It made her cry because this situation was so much different. This time Minato's grip was as weak as his state, not as firm as it had been when he leapt into the sky with her in his arms.

He had been _smiling_ then, not on the verge of tears. She had been _happy_ then, not ready to cry her eyes out. Neither of them had been faced with such _tragic_ circumstances then.

Neither of them had been left on Shinigami's doormat as a gift of sacrifice.

But she blinked back the tears that threatened to leave her eyes dry, not wanting him to see them. She knew it'd either make or break the man, and the latter seemed too likely to risk it. Instead she tried her best to take in the comfort of her loving husband.

Kushina sighed softly, feeling as if all the pain and fear from earlier had vanished with her breath by his touch. Death couldn't touch her here and even if it did, she wouldn't have wanted it any other way; with both of the boys she loved. One hand found Minato's large back, her fingers ghosting the soft fabric of his Hokage coat. "Oh, Minato….don't look so sad." Though Kushina couldn't see his face, she knew that he was sporting a saddened look and wasn't surprised to see his broken features when he pulled back from her. She waited until their eyes locked with each other before she continued.

She wanted him to hear this.

"You made me happy too. I am happy. Very happy," She said, her lips showing her happiness as the corners tugged upwards despite her broken tone. "I'm happy because I got to be loved by you. I got to be a mother and have your child…." Minato's hands slipped from Kushina's shoulders and he rested them against her arms, following her gaze when she looked down at Naruto. She ran a careful finger over his forehead and the down his sleeping face, eyes brightening ever so slightly when the boy quirked a baby smile. "Today's his birthday, Minato. We should both be happy."

Minato was having trouble holding back his tears now, eyes growing watery. He was biting the inside of his cheek to keep them from spilling and his jaw clenched, upset with not only the masked man, but with himself.

He had failed as a sensei before, losing two out of three of his team. Now he failed as a father and a husband. And looking on his current state, perhaps he was a failure as Hokage as well. Feeling close enough to Death to brush against him, he had no doubt in his mind that his body would give out soon.

"And you know…." Kushina uttered in a choked whisper. "I imagine that we, as a family, wouldn't be anything else but happy together ...had we been given the chance to live like one. The only regret I have is that I'll never get to see him grow up, you know."

Minato's heart shattered at Kushina's words, the sound most likely audible, and his remaining chakra exploded into stray emotions no longer under his control. The tears he had been holding back escaped, running a stream down his cheeks as he squeezed his eyes shut. He felt Kushina's cold fingers stroke his face with a gentle touch and wipe them away, a little weak laugh dancing off her tongue.

"I don't think I've ever seen you cry…."

Her touch called out to him and beckoned him closer, making him lean into the cool sensation of her sickly body. It unsettled him, feeling the warmth void of her fingertips due to low chakra. It disgusted him because it was his fault.

After a long sigh, Minato recollected himself and he opened up his eyes, surprising Kushina who now witnessed something that she hadn't seen in them before.

The Fourth Hokage pulled away from her hand and stood up, lips tight and eyes narrowed with renewed strength. He wouldn't let his wife's dreams die with her, not if he could help it. If she wanted to see Naruto years from now, then so be it. By his will, his power, and his remaining chakra, he would make sure she did. "Kushina. There's no need for you to die to take the Nine Tails with you. Save what's left of your chakra for your reunion with Naruto."

Kushina nearly dropped the boy in her arms, flinching not at her husband's words, but at the way the words were gravely spoken. The realization of his plan hit her like a brick wall and when her jaw clamped shut, she felt that if she had clenched her gritted teeth any harder, she'd break them for sure. Feeling an array of mixed emotions, anger overcame them all and the only thing she could manage in her weakened state was a seething whisper, " _Minato_ …"

"I'll seal the rest of your chakra inside of Naruto with the Eight Signed Sealing. I'll take the Nine Tails with me using the Reaper Death Seal."

"You'll die!" Kushina snapped sharply, unknowingly squeezing poor Naruto in her arms. If her body wasn't so frangible, she most likely would have stood up and slapped Minato across the face for thinking such a thing.

When a Tailed Beast was extracted from a jinchuuriki, death was inevitable. Kushina knew that she would die, if not tonight, then surely tomorrow. She would not last.

But Minato could. And she wanted him to stay and protect Naruto as every father should.

"It's the safest bet," Minato growled, no longer sounding like a father, but like a village leader who was prioritizing his people over his own child. "Forsaking one's child is the same as forsaking one's people, and unfortunately….. I have to remember the title I accepted. I may not have lived up to my role as a father and a husband, but I will make up for that and I will store away half of Kyuubi for good for the sake of Konoha."

"Half of him…?" Kushina murmured under her breath, looking up to the blond man who knelt beside her to reach for the little baby resting against her chest. It didn't take long for her to understand his intentions and she jerked away from his grasp, holding Naruto to her protectively and meeting her husband's tight expression with her own passionate glare. "...No…! How could you come up with such an idea…!"

There was no attempt from Minato to steal their child from her, but he showed no sign of giving into her refusal when he returned her scowl with one of his own-much more lighter than hers though. "We don't have time to argue about this, Kushina…..you and I both know you can't hold Kyuubi for much longer." His blue eyes flickered down to the sleeping boy. "He can do this."

Her eyes followed his, landing on the blissfully ignorant child in her arms. What little hair he did have on his head, there was no doubt he had taken after Minato's blond hair. He had even stolen the fair skin of the man, lucky enough to avoid the pale trait of the Uzumaki clan. His calm face was round, cheeks somewhat chubby, more like Kushina than her husband.

He held both of them in him. And hopefully he had taken after the strong spirits they possessed as well because being the container of Kyuubi would make his life all the more difficult.

"He's our son, Kushina. So let's believe in him."

The redhead bit back a painful sob, instead sniffling and holding Naruto closer. Worried about startling her child, she snapped her gaze up at Minato with a clenched jaw that kept her from screaming her next words. "But it's because he's our son that I don't want him to bear such a heavy burden! The Reaper Death Seal will kill you, Minato! Why? I won't make it, but you can! You can stay with Naruto! I want you to stay with him! I want you to watch over him, advise him, protect him, raise him like a father should! Sacrificing Naruto for the village? Sacrificing yourself just so that I get a few minutes with him? In the end, Naruto will have nobody if you go through with this, so why?"

It took all her energy to speak those words and when she had finished, she coughed violently again, this time tasting the strong coppery flavor of what was probably blood.

Unable to bear seeing his precious person in pain, Minato had to look away. That's all he could do because he knew that the extraction of the beast had done this to her body, and he knew that there was no way he could reverse the effect.

Though she couldn't see it, he tried to smile-more for himself than for anybody else because he couldn't give up here regardless of how much he wanted to. There was so much more he needed to do, more people that he needed to protect.

"Don't forget my title, Kushina… as Hokage, it is my duty to protect my village. And as a father, I must protect my son, too. I will die for Naruto." Minato spoke these words firmly and without hesitation, contradicting the hurt in his heart.

He hoped that the shaking of his balled fists at his sides weren't giving him away.

He hoped that he could find truth in his own words.

He hoped that he could _believe it._

The Fourth Hokage turned a little to look at the redhead, a weak smile forming on his face at the sight of the little newborn in her arms. "We're shinobi, aren't we, Kushina? Therefore we must be prepared for the ultimate sacrifices." His eyes fell to Naruto who squirmed in his slumber and his smile collapsed. "But every child needs their mother…..it's an important role that cannot be forgotten. So I'm doing this for the both of you."

Those words struck Kushina hard and she found herself unable to hold his resolute gaze. Determined to change his mind, she tried but her stare wavered and it eventually faltered under the pressure of his powerful blues. Her head dropped and frustrated sobs came from her throat, unaware that her escaped tears were splattering against Naruto's fair skin.

Minato's eyes followed them involuntarily, watching the little droplets trickle down Kushina's face and desperately cling to her jaw before plummeting to their deaths and greeting their son's chest. Unfazed by the sudden wet bullets, Naruto remained still in his sleepy state, comfortable in his dying mother's arms.

The way the whiskered-child had his hands rested against his chest, fists balled in his sleep, had Minato biting the inside of his cheeks.

It made him want to drop everything for a chance to be a selfish father, but he couldn't bring himself to be something that he was not and do something that he could not. He couldn't take Naruto from Kushina even if he wanted to. Though his time with his son was extremely short and he was about to shorten it more, he wanted Kushina to have him all to herself.

It wasn't important that he didn't get to cuddle up to his child or hold him as he slept; it wasn't like he had earned it. Being a dad was one thing, but being a father was another and Minato wasn't turning out to be the latter. Kushina had been right; he was forsaking his son without a second thought.

That was _not_ a father.

Minato turned away from the sight of his wife and child, a bittersweet smile seizing his lips as he removed the caustic thoughts from his mind. He wouldn't have another chance to wallow in such pitiful thinking, but there wasn't much time to spare. Kushina had lasted longer than usually expected of an jinchuuriki dying of extraction, but he wasn't interested in pushing her any further than necessary.

He turned to meet the hateful eyes of the Tailed Beast being restricted by chains and raised his hands to form the first sign of the Death Seal almost spitefully as if taunting the animal.

 _Snake._

In response, the fox growled darkly-probably its way of cursing the Hokage.

 _Boar. Ram. Rabbit. Dog-_

Stopping abruptly, Minato's hands remained frozen in the Rat hand sign before falling to his sides as his senses kicked in. A familiar feel of mysterious chakra hit him like a brick to the head and his guard increased ten fold the moment he realized who the chakra belonged to. He almost wanted to scold himself for thinking that a mere shadow clone could do much to shinobi of this man's level.

"You came back again..."

"...Minato….?" Kushina whispered questioningly, staring at his unmoving form and most likely wondering who it was that the blond was speaking to.

When the Fourth tilted his head in the direction of the dangerous presence, she followed his gaze and the hidden enemy emerged from the protection of the trees, leaping down from the branch to the ground.

As expected, it was the masked man from earlier.

The way his visible eye glinted from behind his twisted mask made it near to impossible not to picture what kind of wicked smile he could be hosting on his face to match.

As if challenging him in a nasty contest, Kushina sported her own hostility through her glare, holding Naruto close to her protectively. "If you came back thinking that you're going to get the Nine Tails, you'd better think again!" She spat viciously, nothing in her voice showing signs of her weakened and dying state.

With a light chuckle, the masked man practically waved her off and regarded the blond male standing near her instead. "You're not really planning to store so much chakra inside a tiny infant, are you, Great Hokage? I thought you were more logical than that," he said in a teasingly monotone manner.

Minato turned around and shrouded the man with his full attention, lips tight in a serious frown. With no intention of answering him, he remained silent, a scowl almost as nasty as Kushina's playing with his facial features.

There were so many things he wanted to ask-how did he find out Kushina's labor location? What did he plan to use the Nine Tails for?- But for the sake of time, he wasn't going to ask, especially when he knew he wouldn't get those answers anyway.

The Thunder Flying God technique sent Minato to the masked man. Like the mark on Kushina that allowed him to teleport to her aid, he had marked the man similarly after striking him down with the Rasengan.

The moment he teleported; he shot a palm into the man's chest, shoving him back into the same tree he had been hidden in minutes before. Caught between the hard bark and the Fourth Hokage's hand, the masked man could only look down and witness the seal forming under Minato's fingers, imprinting itself onto his cloak.

Seconds later, the Nine Tails was roaring; this time more piercingly than he had ever done. He flailed under the chains, each one of his tails trying to pull free and the struggle had Kushina crying out as she tried to keep him at bay.

The realization of what Minato Namikaze had done hit home faster than expected, and the masked man's visible red eye burned into unwavering blues. "Impressive, Fourth. You figured out that I had control over the Nine Tails and terminated it. I applaud your intelligence."

Minato's face didn't change, showing no gratification towards the ninja acknowledging his intellect. With his hand threateningly pushing him further into the tree's sharp bark, he responded, "you don't seem like the type of shinobi who does something reckless without having a plan."

"Oh, don't flatter me," the masked man drawled sarcastically with a tilt of his head. Following the next moment he blinked, his visible eye turned dark with hate. His fingers clamped tight around Minato's wrist, the cold sensation of his skin going right through the protective fabric of the Hokage's sleeve and hitting his own. "In exchange for your compliment, _have a gift_."

By the time the words "Shadow Clone Jutsu" reached Minato's ears, he was already reacting too late. The familiar puffing sound of a clone being formed caught the blond off guard and he spun around to see a masked man copy with kunai drawn running at him. The grip on his wrists tightened and the surprising amount of strength left Minato with about three seconds to think, throwing a kick at the clone instead.

The shadow clone jumped back and launched the kunai mid-air; a rather precarious move considering that there was a possibility of hitting himself.

Minato took advantage of his marking on Kushina and teleported, freeing himself from the strong hold. The kunai struck the tree, only inches from the masked man's face; he showed no sign of fear, almost as if he had already knew he wasn't in the tool's path.

Wondering just who this man was, Minato's sidemark thinking served as his own distraction and the clone's sudden dash forward had him summoning his own clone in haste.

Within seconds, the clones were facing off, going at one another with kunai drawn. Their blades clashed, metal clanking against metal, and they ran circles around each other in a full blown dual. The real masked man remained in his same spot, leaning against the kunai-impaled tree as if watching an entertaining show.

Minato, on the contrary, was breathing hard and trying to figure out the best course of action when he had so little chakra to spare and so many things to protect. For a few crucial seconds, he took his eyes off his opponent and risked a glance at Kushina to confirm her safety, but it proved to be an opportunity taken by the enemy.

The first thing he saw her do was point behind him. "Minato!" Kushina yelled in warning.

When he whirled around, a tight grip found the collar of his Hokage coat and a palm was thrown painfully into his chest. The impact was more powerful than expected, leaving him tasting the salty zest of the blood that managed to come up as a result. Following the nasty hack of blood, Minato's body suddenly felt... _'loose'_ and he couldn't stop from slumping forward into the punch.

 _Had a chakra coil been shot?_

With a puff, everything from Minato's defeated clone came rushing back to him; the damage it had taken, the energy it wasted- he gritted his teeth as he took in the pain from the indirect battle.

"Rag doll."

A pulse of chakra slammed into Minato and forced its way into the coil located in his chest, spreading throughout his body that was beginning to feel heavier than it normally did in his low-chakra state. Starting with his arms, his hands, his fingers; he was beginning to lose feeling in all of his limbs. It wasn't long until his legs and feet followed suit, rendering him unable to hold himself up. When masked man pulled back, he wearily pitched forward and collapsed to the ground.

Laying on his stomach, Minato found that everything had grown _numb_ and he couldn't move at all. He was just laying there as if he were nothing more than a rag doll. But that wasn't all. The chakra coil in his chest had definitely been shot which was far from good, but he could also feel the weakened state of his other coils. It felt as if they had been tampered with in some way.

It felt like he was _leaking_ chakra.

He could hear Kushina's voice from behind him, calling his name and telling him to get up because he had a son to protect.

Indeed he did, but those words proved to be too useless in the case of ridding him of his immobilized state. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how much strength he put into his muscles, he could not move. It's power was reigning over every inch of his entire body and it didn't help that the jutsu had also shot his chakra coils. He couldn't put any of it to use or send it to his paralyzed limbs as it was flowing wildly throughout his veins without any form of control and seeping out of him by the second.

Though Minato couldn't move his arms or legs, he found that he was still able to turn his head and he slowly craned his neck at the sound of Kushina's weak yet frantic screaming. Having seemingly forgotten the sleeping Naruto in one arm, she pounded an angry fist on the ground with all her remaining strength as she pleaded with tears in her eyes.

"Minato, get up! Minato! MINATO!" As her crying rose in volume, Minato could see the flowing ends of the masked man's cloak come into his view as he walked around his limp body. Now Kushina's fury became directed towards him, a nasty growl etched in her voice. "Hey! Don't you _dare_ touch him!"

As if challenging the woman's threatening tone, the masked man slammed a foot down on Minato's arm.

Pain shot up his attacked arm instantly and his body even jerked with it as if his nerves completely overpowered the paralyzing jutsu in that second. Any groan or response of pain received was stifled when Minato gritted his teeth, but the way his eyes squeezed shut and the jolting of his body said otherwise.

Kushina choked back something-perhaps tears, a cry?- and she lowered her head, hiding her face into the blanket that held Naruto.

Suddenly the jutsu immobilizing him felt like a missive sent from the land of hell to torture him.

Blue eyes blinked with anguish.

Minato wanted nothing more than to comfort Kushina; he wanted to wrap her and Naruto up in his arms, tell them that everything was going to be okay.

The jutsu had not done anything to his ability to communicate. He could still talk; and he should have spoken, but his mouth was dry. When he opened it to speak, it would shut because he didn't know what to say. Telling her that everything would be okay was a general phrase; the real question was- _what_ would be okay?

Would she be okay? Naruto? Him? The Leaf?

 _He didn't want to lie to her._

"Useless…." The masked man spat bitterly. "If anybody deserves the title of the _Joke_ Hokage, it would be you, _Minato Namikaze_ ," the name rolled of his tongue as if it left a nasty taste in his mouth. "You're supposed to be the leader and you can't protect _anybody._ "

Though it was obvious that the words were meant to spite him and cause him emotional hurt, Minato had already succumbed to his own internal turmoil, realizing his inabilities long before they were pointed out. He already knew that he had failed to protect Kushina, to protect _Naruto._

And now he had failed to protect the village too.

As Hokage, that was his job-and what was he doing now? He was losing chakra by the second without even doing a thing. He was laying on the ground, being talked down while his dying wife was pushing herself beyond her own limits to keep a Tailed Beast at bay.

And she was _dying_.

"Shut up….just shut up…" Came a weak voice.

The masked man looked to Kushina before kicking Minato's limp arm away as if disgusted by him. He walked over to the tree marked with the kunai from earlier and pulled the tool free from the bark. His proud walk was almost like a gleeful stroll that resembled someone who had finally done something they've always wanted to do. "Oh, but it's true." He examined the kunai before poking the end of it with his finger. "I'd love to stay and give you more examples, but I'm afraid I can't. Maybe another time."

His figure begun to swirl as he started his teleportation.

"Tell your son I said ' _happy birthday_ ," Was his final words before he was gone.

~Kakashi Hatake - Present~

Kushina's barrier had indeed shattered soon after as her body succumbed to the dying state it had endured for so long. She was on the verge of blacking out when the Third Hokage and his team came to their aid. However, her chains didn't falter-possibly through sheer will alone as the Uzumaki descendents tended to not only have amazing chakra reserves, but strong hearts as well. She revealed Minato's original plan which was then taken over by Sarutobi, leading to the loss of the Leaf's Third Hokage.

Kakashi, along with most of the Anbu team were trusted with rushing an unconscious Minato to the Leaf hospital. Having been a student under a man as strong and serene as Minato, seeing him under critical condition and witnessing him cling to dear life by a thread was something he thought he would never see. If he were to say he wasn't worried in the slightest, he'd be lying as he had already lost the other two members of his team; Rin and Obito.

Losing a sensei, too? The thought was rather _unfathomable_.

Kakashi heaved out a sigh and placed the book he was reading down on the table as if taking a breather from its contents. Jiraiya had really gone all out with this newest series and Kakashi wasn't sure whether to feel honored or annoyed by the fact that the character Grey was without a doubt based off his past-self. Grey was a man who solely depended on himself and only cared to finish out missions given to him, even at the expense of his own teammates.

So in turn, he lost both of them and he then lost himself. And it was when he nearly lost his own sensei that he came out of his turmoil and realized what he should have before. Character development for the win.

"Kakashi! Have you been listening to me or are you too busy being lost in la-la-land?!" The familiar sing-song voice filled with too much energy snapped Kakashi from his train of thought and he looked up to see Might Gai leaning forward on the table with a sour face.

"Don't knock over your ramen," Kakashi said as he momentarily eyed the bowl sitting innocently under the taijutsu master. He picked up his book and continued to read only for it to be snatched from his grasp. "I don't think I was done with that."

"Kakashi!"

"What?"

Looking mildly upset, Gai started waving his arms around in a frantic manner that resembled a child tantrum. "Don't ignore me when I'm telling you about how pumped I am about our fight!" He pointed his finger at Kakashi, putting on his winning smile. "This is a chance for me to show you just how much your pal has grown in strength, and let me tell you, he's much too powerful for you now! You know I'll kick your little booty straight to the moon!"

Kakashi stared only for a few seconds before reaching out and grabbing the book from Gai. "Yeah, I'm sure you will." Luckily his bookmark had saved the spot he was at. He returned to the page and resumed his reading. It seemed like Grey's sensei was about to give him the heart-to-heart conversation about what it really means to be a man.

"At least tell me how excited you are to fight such a strong shinobi such as myself!" Gai pleaded.

"We've fought three times this week already. All the excitement has been sucked out of me." Kakashi turned the page, beginning to skim rather than fully read because the dialogue was starting to give him mass amounts of déjà vu.

Sensei is talking about how he _lost his wife_ now.

Sensei fell into a state of _depression_. Sensei _forgot_ everyone he cared about for so long. Sensei even forgot his _own_ _child_ and he regrets every second he spent away from the ones he should have been protecting-

Kakashi dropped the book on the table and it slammed shut on impact. The front cover mocked him and his eyes slowly ran over it before stopping at Jiraiya's signature at the bottom corner. Nobody could see with the mask that obscured their view, but Kakashi was smiling behind it. Whether it was a good smile or not, the man wondered that himself.

Jiraiya was one sly bastard.

Gai remained still from across the table and his gaze flickered between the book and Kakashi, eyes hosting placid concern. "What's wrong, Kakashi? Jiraiya's newest Taboo series ain't cutting it for ya? Let me guess, the main character didn't get the girl?" A little playful grin had formed on his lips, but it soon dropped when he noticed the conflicted glint in his friend's eyes. "Hey...you're looking a little down there. Is it really that serious?"

Following a pause that was too long for comfort, Kakashi finally looked up from the book and greeted Gai with a paled face. "Do you…." Another uncertain pause as if he was thinking about his next words carefully. "Do you ever think about that night? Sixteen years ago?"

The dark haired man stared back at his friend in silence; his expression holding something that could have been reluctant pain. His answer took a while to come out. "...It's best to leave some things in the past, wouldn't you agree?"

Of course. Kakashi understood that very well. As a man who had carried around the pain of the past for most of his childhood, he knew that it was best to keep the past in the past as dragging it around was true torment. However, he wasn't the one who needed to be told such things.

"Try telling that to Minato-sensei…."

"...Kushina's death is still killing him, eh?" Though it came out like a question, Gai probably had meant it rhetorically as most of the village already knew that the Fourth Hokage had not yet fully dealt with it. His eyes dropped and he sighed. His sing-song voice was gone, replaced by the serious tone that was usually swallowed up by his eccentric personality. "I'm amazed that man has carried it for so many years. He's even beaten your high score."

Kakashi nodded glumly, pushing Jiraiya's Taboo series away from him and to the far end of the table as if he didn't want it near him right now. "Yeah….and what's worse, he doesn't even know who Naruto is to him. According to Jiraiya, he looked Naruto right in the face and…. _nothing_."

Gai's distinct eyebrows furrowed and he leaned forward in his seat, voice dropping down to a low whisper. "Not even a little? What about the similar features? The blonde hair? The blue eyes? Even the name did nothing? Naruto has Kushina's face for goodness sakes!"

Throughout Gai's raging and mob of questions, Kakashi was shaking his head. "I suppose that even if he did notice the similarity, it never clicked inside his mind. I wonder if he even remembers that he has a son."

It wouldn't have surprised Kakashi if he didn't.

Upon renewal of Minato's chakra reserves and coils, he had been marked as emotionally traumatized. Physically, he recovered fairly quick, but mentally was a whole different perspective. For almost a year, he remained in the Leaf Hospital under constant and careful supervision, practically despondent to the real world. The nurses reported that he was able to do most things by himself such as keeping up with his hygiene, but when it came to things like eating, they would have to watch him until he ate or else he wouldn't. And when he trained by himself outside; bringing him out wasn't hard, but convincing him to come back inside was another thing entirely.

Sometimes when Kakashi came to visit him, Minato's knuckles would be bandaged up.

Gai opened his mouth to reply, but his attention suddenly went elsewhere and he looked out the window of the ramen shop. "Speak of the devil…"

When the silver-haired shinobi followed his gaze, he caught sight of the former Hokage walking through the streets. The man was staring down at the ground, kicking up the dirt in his path due to his dragging feet. By the look of his ruffled expression, it seemed he was disturbed by something.

Kakashi turned to Gai.

The taijutsu master raised a big eyebrow and heaved a sigh before nodding encouragingly. He even gave him a thumbs up. "Go on. But we're still sparring later." Though he tried to hide it, the disappointment was still apparent in his voice.

By the time Kakashi poked his head out the ramen shop's entrance, Minato was already a few feet away and he had to practically run to catch up with the man.

"Minato-sensei!"

Said blond man came to an abrupt stop and he glanced over his shoulder. He appeared slightly surprised to see his former student and he didn't bother to hide that fact. "Kakashi? Do you need something?" For some reason, the way he asked this sounded as if he were confused and this bothered the younger male, but he didn't address it.

Scratching his spiky hair sheepishly, Kakashi shrugged, caught off guard by such an odd question. "Ah….not really. We just haven't seen each other in while is all. You know, with your non-stop missions and Might Gai constantly on my ass." The weird sensation from using profanity in front of his former teacher was enough to give slight pink to Kakashi's cheeks but perhaps since he was no longer a child, Minato didn't care to scold him. "He never wants to take a break from sparring and training."

"Sounds like Gai hasn't changed at all." Minato's face brightened a little and he forced a tiny smile to form on his lips; however, it was nothing compared to the lively smiles he would sport before the death of Kushina. Every time he smiled so slightly like that; it left a bittersweet pain in everyone's bellies because nobody knew whether they were going to see that real smile again.

Kakashi returned the smile, despite the aching pain in his chest. "Yeah. I'm not sure whether it's a blessing or a curse….maybe it's both…" His voice faded as soon as he noticed Minato looking past him and he turned to find out what had stole his teacher's attention.

It was Naruto.

The blond was still dressed in his Anbu Uniform, but his mask was moved to the side so that his face was visible. By the way he was looking around and poking his head into different shops, it was obvious that he was looking for something. Or for someone. And it was given away the moment he turned in Kakashi's direction and waved excitedly.

"Hey, it's Kakashi-sensei….! Guess what Kakashi-sensei, we just came back from a mission and..." He was bolting over with serious anticipation; face bright with gaiety. That is, until he got closer. When he did, his brightened expression dimmed and he looked to Minato with eyes filled with something that may have been between vexation and dismal. "Hey, it's you again…. We've been searching all over for you. Why did you run off like that?"

Kakashi looked between them in confusion.

Blue and blue clashed with one another, but Minato didn't hold Naruto's gaze for long and eventually averted his eyes only after a few seconds. "Tell your friends to stop looking. I'm not going to be your squad leader. Lady Tsunade was not thinking things through then."

"Grandma Tsunade knows what she's doing! She always does-"

Minato cut him off. "Not this time," he retorted in a voice so stern that Kakashi could have sworn he saw some sort of subtle defeat in Naruto's body language. His face had even contorted into something that resembled submission and his shoulders slumped.

It was apparent that Naruto had nothing else to say which was surprising and not like him at all. Actually, it was beginning to startle Kakashi just how quiet Naruto was being in Minato's presence and he wondered why he was acting like that. As far as he was concerned, the blond had no idea who Minato was to him. Perhaps it was out of respect for a former Hokage?

Kakashi decided that maybe it was time that he try to intervene on the matter.

From what he collected, it seemed that Lady Tsunade had assigned Minato to be the squad leader of Naruto's Anbu team and Minato was refusing to meet the challenge. There was no doubt in Kakashi's mind that the Fourth Hokage wasn't keen on being responsible for more lives. Whether it was because of the incident sixteen years ago or the deaths of Obito and Rin, Kakashi wasn't sure. It could have even been both, but in summary, he didn't want anymore blood on his hands again.

Understandable.

However, Lady Tsunade probably had more in mind than whatever it was she told everyone then. It was a hunch, but perhaps Tsunade wanted to bring Minato and Naruto together in the most subtle way possible. With the seal placed on Naruto when he was an academy student, it was transparent that she was playing the safest route she could.

"I don't see what the big deal is," Kakashi murmured nonchalantly. "I mean, you've been a Hunter-nin for a long time now, doing missions on your own. It's a bit dark. Why don't you try it, Minato-sensei? Doesn't it sound a bit fun and a lot less lonely to have a team again? Don't tell me you've forgotten the perks of it." He shot the older man an encouraging smile, but found that he wasn't even looking at him.

He was looking at Naruto instead. And Naruto was looking at him with a drained expression that Kakashi didn't remember seeing earlier.

Those deep blue eyes scanned the boy's face intensely, seemingly taking in every feature, every nook and cranny of Naruto's being. With his eyes squinted and his eyebrows furrowed with confliction, it was as if he were lost in thought and trying to figure something out.

"The way you're staring kind of creeps me out, Fourth Hokage..." Naruto muttered sheepishly, taking an unconscious step back. It could have been Kakashi's imagination, but it looked like the sixteen year old was _sweating_. And the slight twist in his expression made it seem as if he were trying to mask some sort of pained face.

Minato didn't waver his vehement staring despite his apology. "Sorry. You just look like somebody I used to know…"

"Y-Yeah…?" Naruto breathed out awkwardly, fluttering his eyes wearily as if he hadn't been sleeping enough lately. His legs started to wobble under his own weight and he held his head.

Kakashi hunched forward so that he was at Naruto's shorter level and looked the blond in the face, grabbing his shoulders to steady him. So it wasn't his imagination, he _had_ been sweating. And now that he was closer, he could see that his tan complexion was beginning to grow pale. "Are you alright, Naruto?"

Naruto blinked rapidly as if fighting the urge to pass out. He shook himself free from Kakashi's grasp and stumbled away, holding his stomach. "I think I'm fine…I just need...just need to….to..." Startled villagers stopped in their tracks when Naruto pitched forward onto his knees and then collapsed to the ground.

When Minato and Kakashi rushed forward, they found him unconscious.

* * *

 **A/N: Thanks for all the follows, favs and the comments for the first chapter! Writing Naruto fanfiction is harder than I thought it would be (and I thought it would be hard anyway).**

 **I'd really appreciate reviews; whether it be about the story or the writing! Especially if you've got something good to say because that makes me want to update faster! :D Thanks for reading my first Naruto fanfic! There's others on the way~**


	3. Chapter 3

The moment they arrived at Konoha hospital, nurses and medic-nins were already rushing to their side. A gurney was summoned in haste and Naruto, with the help of Kakashi and Minato, was secured on the mobile stretcher. He was unconscious still, as he had been the entire way there, but now twitched and mumbled inaudibly in his comatose state as if having a bad dream.

For some reason, Minato found it hard to let him go and Kakashi had to pry his grip off of the younger male so that he could be taken away. Not knowing the boy at all, it was a bizarre sensation that sat in the pit of Minato's stomach, but he could not deny the urge to follow Naruto, to go with him and make sure that the medic-nins took proper care of him.

The teenager was rolled away, down the hallway and to the emergency room, leaving Minato to watch with entranced blue orbs and an outstretched hand that reached out for the boy. Out of fear that his former teacher would follow, Kakashi didn't release his grasp on him until Naruto was out of sight.

Afterwards, Minato went silent for a few crucial seconds and was despondent to Kakashi calling his name repeatedly.

It was only after he got over the initial shock and the pounding of his heart that followed Naruto's departure that Minato was able to respond to Kakashi's attempts. He reassured him that he was merely shaken up by Naruto and that he needn't mind his reaction from earlier.

Minato put on a front; he smiled and disregarded his former student's worries as best he could. His composure needed a little work, didn't it? He used to be so calm and collected.

 _Don't you remember how calm I was before, Kakashi?_

Whether Kakashi truly fell for it or not, Minato didn't know, but the silver-haired jounin eventually left to go retrieve Naruto's teammates, leaving him to wait for Naruto alone. The blonde held a tight, forced smile and he kept it up until he was sure that the man was really gone before dropping it suddenly.

It was evident that Kakashi hadn't heard Naruto's mumbling.

But he had. Or at least he was sure that he had. Minato didn't think he'd imagine Naruto saying his name and then muttering something about not looking so sad.

Who was it that looked sad?

 _Was it him?_

The irritation that settled in after mere minutes of pondering the question bothered Minato and he eventually decided that he should just drop it and write it off as a nightmare that he was having. Naruto didn't even know him nor did he know Naruto, so it had to have been nothing more than a coincidence that he just happened to dream about him.

He figured he should think about something else other than Naruto.

For one, about Lady Tsunade's proposal from earlier. He wanted to know what exactly was going through her head when she appointed him as a taicho. He had nothing against any of those kids on the squad and he sure hoped they hadn't taken his outburst personally, but he just wasn't fit to lead anybody anymore. Saying that if he wasn't able to lead a village, he couldn't lead a team was invalid-it was supposed to be the other way around, but he found that his failure as a Hokage that night sixteen years ago took its toll of his confidence.

Now that he thought back on that, Minato ceased his thinking momentarily and made a mental note to himself to apologize to not only Naruto and his team, but to Tsunade for running off as childishly as he had earlier.

He simply no longer deemed himself fit to be responsible for lives anymore. He couldn't protect his own wife so how could he protect five children who, with one mistake on his part, could die any minute? He wasn't ready to carry that burden and he didn't quite understand why an intelligent kunoichi such as Lady Tsunade couldn't see that herself.

Knowing her, however, Minato had a lingering feeling that the assignment was not only meant to benefit the ANBU team, but to benefit him as well. And it only confirmed his suspicions further that Jiraiya-sensei just happened to be stopping by before she thought to give him this mission-perhaps he had persuaded her in some way.

It was a nice gesture and all. Really, he appreciated that they wanted to bring him out from the dump that Kushina's death had thrown him into, but it would benefit everyone if he remained there. He wasn't interested in failing to protect those he cared about again.

But then there was Naruto. God, that kid.

Minato didn't know what that boy was doing to him or why he felt so attracted to him, but he did. This attraction was not meant in a sexual sense, but in an emotional sense-it was like he was supposed to know the kid from somewhere. Something about him knocked Minato off his guard and he didn't know what it was, but it was unnerving. The mysteriousness of it all was a good kind though, not the eerie type that made your skin crawl, but the kind that left you pursuing it to find out all of its secrets.

There was a possibility that he could like Naruto if he got to know him some more, but it didn't seem like the feeling was mutual.

Back in Tsunade's office when Minato went to obtain an S-rank mission, he wondered what Naruto's problem was. He was used to the attention the rest of the kids had given him then, it seemed that despite his failure as Hokage, he was still well-known and respected, not shunned like he thought he'd ought to be. People still talked to him, in fact-they tended to initiate conversation with him often, and even if that was too intimidating for them to muster, a simple greeting and a "I hope you're doing well" or a "How has your day been?" was enough to bring the Konoha people joy.

But Naruto…..ah, Naruto. He had just stared at Minato. And not only had he just stared at him, but he had this absolute look of _terror_ on his face. Minato didn't know whether anybody else noticed or not, but that boy's complexion had grown pale at the sight of him, and Minato almost wanted to look down and make sure he had remembered to put on clothes before he walked out of the house. Not that he had ever done that before, but that was the feeling Naruto gave him.

And he didn't understand what he had done wrong.

That taken into consideration and his lack of confidence for protecting other people-was it really a smart idea to become their taicho? It didn't seem recommended. But the glinting sparkle in Jiraiya-sensei's eyes and the unwavering expression of Lady Tsunade as they announced his newest mission gave Minato the impression that they weren't going to let him back out of it even if he wanted to, especially the kunoichi.

" _Oh, you can back out, Minato."_

" _Really? I'd appreciate- uh…."_

" _..."_

" _...You know what, nevermind."_

" _I thought so."_

The former Hokage huffed out a sigh at the thought of Tsunade going sarcastic with him like she had done so many times in the past. He wasn't fond of the killer glint in her eyes when she would go silent and wait for him to reevaluate his choice. It reminded him of Kushina, and that woman was such a nightmare when she was upset that if someone were to try telling Minato a scary story in the dark and they simply whispered, " _Kushina is mad at you_ ", he could piss himself. She was that terrifying. An older version of her was probably a lot more gruesome, but Minato figured it was better to leave that idea as an educated guess rather than a true fact.

That being said, if he were to take on this mission, he'd have to slide back into the reality of having a team once more. All these years he had grown accustomed to being a hunter-nin and working alone so being around people for most of the day would definitely shake his routine up a little bit.

He would have to learn how to get along in a group again. He would have to learn how to be a teacher again-wait no, these weren't his students. They would be comrades under his command. A slight difference, but not one that was too big. And perhaps a good thing, but he had to be careful not to compare them to his previous team, he had to be careful that he didn't repeat his mistakes-he lost Rin and Obito, yes….but Kakashi was still here and he grown into a great ninja, hadn't he? _Hadn't he….?_

 _Positive. Positive. Positive._

He had to be just that if he wanted to handle this team properly. That was one of the things he had learned in his days of leading a team; positivity from the teacher usually rubbed off on the students as well. If he did this, wallowing in his self-pity wouldn't be good for Naruto and his teammates, especially when they would be looking up to him not only as a taicho, but as a former Hokage too. Though Minato felt it would have been easier on him if they hadn't picked up on that fact, it was too late. They knew who he was and he couldn't do anything about it now, but prove to them that he deserved the title, even if he himself felt as though he did not.

The doors to the hospital were suddenly thrown open and when Minato turned towards the obtrusive entrance, he was surprised to catch sight of a familiar blonde kunoichi wearing a grass-green haori. Lady Tsunade, followed by a large mass of supposed medic-nins and another shinobi, was speed-walking for the hallway. He wanted to ask why she was here, but their quick pace converted into frantic running and by the looks of things, she didn't seem to have time to stop and answer him.

Minato's eyes landed on the shinobi trailing the back of the group. The dark-hair and the pale skin-he had seen that boy. He couldn't recall his name in that second, but there was no mistaking it; he was one of the members of Naruto's team.

What was he doing with that group?

Tsunade was quick to momentarily pause at the check-in desk and the woman sitting there was even quicker to stop what she was doing to address the fifth. "What room is Naruto stationed?"

As if prepared ahead of time, the woman didn't even have to check to respond. "Floor one, room twelve, Lady Hokage."

"Thank you." And with that, the entire group hurried down the hallway, unknowingly leaving Minato with a nasty feeling in his gut.

* * *

Naruto found himself drowning, literally sinking into a watery grave without any means to resist the pull. His body didn't want to cooperate with him, his limbs were heavy and it felt as if they had fallen asleep, dragging him down, _down_ into a bottomless pit of water. He didn't feel like he was drowning though; he couldn't feel the water swarming into his mouth or his lungs start to fill up, his eyes didn't sting-there was just nothing. No pain, no anything. Just sinking.

The water wasn't empty either. As Naruto sunk closer and closer to sea (or lake?) level, he passed by various objects in the junk infested waters. None of it seemed to be random; actually, a lot of the items seemed to be things from his past ranging from cherished things like the necklace Grandma Tsunade had given him or the bracelet Sakura had handmade for him to little things like that one orange and black cup that he always saw when walking by the display window of that one shop-and hey, was that the paintbrush he had used to paint on Gai-sensei's face when he had been trying to woo Sakura with his pranking charm?

Ah, good times. He never did understand why she hadn't fell head over heels in love with him in that moment. It was a pretty priceless prank. The guy walked around with a pink, curly mustache on his face and nobody said a thing for a good hour into training. How the hell was Sasuke better than that?

Naruto sunk further and further. Seconds turned into minutes as he continued to relish in the nostalgia of the ancient memories he passed by.

He figured he would wake up before he hit the bottom, and for the time being, he simply floated and recalled the past. It was actually kind of peaceful and if this was meant to be a nightmare, it was doing a pretty bad job of frightening Naruto. Honestly, if drowning was this calming and no possibility of death was involved, he'd probably throw himself in a lake every chance he got.

Still, all good things must come to an end and eventually, Naruto did wake up. Or so he thought. All it took was a little blink and suddenly he bursted through the surface, gasping for air as if he had actually had been drowning previously. He smacked and splashed at the water a bit frantically and suddenly found himself being dragged up and out of what seemed to be a lake.

Upon dry land, Naruto spat and hacked up water, his arms barely even able to support his body weight when he tried to sit up. It didn't help that he was drenched to the bone either, his damp clothes only adding to the load weighing him down. Like a dog, he shook his hair, having forgotten that someone or something had helped him out of the water.

"Hello, Naruto."

The startled blonde jumped so hard that it seemingly cleansed his system of all the water that had somehow managed to clog him up and he was greeted by a pair of dark eyes. It took him a while for his focus to zoom out and when it did, he was somewhat horrified to find his twin staring right at him-literally his twin.

The boy staring at him looked virtually identical to Naruto in every way with the exception of a few distinct differences. Unlike Naruto, his black hair was longer and a little shaggier than his. He also had fairly noticeable circles under his eyes and the whiskered scars on his cheeks were more distinguishable.

Naruto looked around.

They sat on the bank of a small, yet apparently deep lake encircled by grass as black as coal and a mass of dead, skeletal trees. Their branches stuck out and twisted each and every way, some hardly covered with dead leaves and some not at all. The sky was bathed in red and the faint clouds that decorated it were a light orange, almost like that of a sunset. It was beautiful, but eerie and haunting at the same time.

Naruto looked back to find that his twin had not left his side.

Cautiously, he eyed the dark-haired version of himself and his head tilted curiously to one side and the then other, wondering if he was a mere reflection that would at first mock his movements before turning into a nightmarish being and attempting to devour his soul. His twin didn't move along with him and instead cocked an eyebrow at him in confusion.

"What are you doing?" He asked.

Normally, Naruto would have felt a little embarrassed at this point, but this was only a dream and it wasn't as if Sakura or the Fourth Hokage were around to see this. He still turned a bright red though and scratched his head sheepishly. "Sorry. I guess you're not a reflection."

"Well….we do have different hair col-"

Naruto cut him off to save himself further embarrassment. "Yeah, I know. Thank you for the obvious input….um…?" His eyes darted around.

The other seemed to have caught on fairly quick. "Naruto."

Or maybe not.

"Naruto…?" The blonde inquired slowly. "You mean that's your name?"

"Yes."

The first thing that popped into Naruto's mind was that one; this was not okay. Two; this was not okay. And three; this was absolutely NOT okay. Naruto never admitted this to anyone, but as a child he often wondered why his parents had given him such a stupid name. It wasn't until he had met Jiraiya-sensei and learned of his part in naming Naruto, that he actually started to appreciate it. Being named after a gutsy protagonist was pretty cool.

And plus, who else could say they were named after a main character featured in an author's first book?

That being said; Naruto was his name. Okay, maybe he was acting a little butthurt, but if there was anything about himself that he was truly proud of, it was his name. And if he didn't have to share it, then he wouldn't. Besides, calling each other the same name would just be confusing.

"Hmm...got any other names?" Naruto asked.

"No. I'm you."

The jinchuuriki bobbed his head thoughtfully, almost mockingly, but then his blue eyes bulged-wide enough to make it feel like they'd pop out of his sockets. That had sounded all too familiar and suddenly the voice of his ANBU instructor echoed in his mind.

' _They will always be straightforward with you. Statistics show that if you ask them who they are, a hundred percent of the time, they will respond with 'I'm you'._

That's right; Naruto had heard of this before while studying the basics of interrogation, manipulation and mind distortion back in ANBU training. If this was absolutely real and not a simple dream-that meant that he was on the verge of entering his Confound Crisis phase.

Statistically, the Confound Crisis usually happens when the person either least expects it or doesn't feel it beginning at all. A virtual way of putting it would be the splitting of one path into two or more; or the blocking of paths because something stands in the way. It was like a crossroads of some sort in which the person must either do something or must learn something in order to mend their path and straightened it back up again. Nothing is fixed until the person overcomes whatever obstacle it may be, and then once they have-their subconscious disappears.

Until then, they visit often-at least once in a dream or in a nightmare, giving off subtle hints to whatever it is that must be made right. But ultimately, it is up to person to make amends. Though able to happen with civilians as all living things have chakra, it was more common in shinobi and young academy students. And age mattered naught, it depended only on mental condition.

And it seemed that Naruto's mentality was assuming it's crisis state.

This sort of thing was inevitable though, so there would be no point in getting angsty or upset about it. Instead, Naruto decided to take a more lighthearted approach on it.

He flashed his identical counterpart a large grin. "Can I name you something else? It'd be annoying if we called each other the same thing, don't you think?"

"Okay."

"How about ramen?"

"No…."

"Sushi?"

"No."

"Yeah, sushi can't top ramen. How about Sakura?"

A long pause. "...No."

Having caught the look of consideration and the slight blush on the other's face, Naruto's teasing laugh converted into a snort when he tried to hold it in. He wouldn't have seriously named him Sakura, but he just wanted to see what kind of reaction he'd get out of him and it was satisfying enough. And it definitely confirmed that this very well might be his subconscious.

His look alike stared at him, eyes tired and unfocused as if he were getting impatient and Naruto silently told himself to get serious. He wasn't very good at picking names-much lesser naming someone, especially when he needed their approval. Through experience, he found that most people didn't like the names he came up with and that was fine by him as everyone had their own strengths and weaknesses, but this was getting ridiculous.

Jiraiya-sensei always came up with awesome names for his book series….

After a few quiet minutes, Naruto abruptly turned to the other, outwardly startling him. "I got it! How about….Menma?"

The dark-haired boy blinked, opening his mouth rather quick to protest, but stopped short. "...I think I like that name."

Naruto lit up. "Really? Menma, it is then!"

A silent prayer was sent up to the almighty beings of the shinobi world for giving Jiraiya-sensei the inspiration (whatever indecency it may have been…) to write the side series for the Tales of an Utterly Gutsy Shinobi in which the protagonist finds his long lost brother, Menma.

It was a win-win situation for all; nobody gets confused by having the same name and everybody gets to have a cool name from a book series.

* * *

Menma and Naruto lay on their backs in the black grass, staring up at the red stained sky of Naruto's subconscious. Neither of them had spoken for awhile now since the first hint. The silence was comfortable and not as awkward as the blonde expected it to be, but it was daunting on him only because he had a tough question to ask himself and he was finding it difficult to answer it.

 _What have you always wanted?_

What was that supposed to mean? The question was harder than an S-Rank mission! There were a lot of things that Naruto had always wanted; ramen, Sakura to notice him, to surpass Sasuke, to rasengan Kakashi in the ass...but none of those were the right answers. And everything else he tried was also incorrect, according to Menma.

They were irrelevant to the core of Naruto's Confound Crisis.

However, Naruto didn't expect to mend it on the first day. It ranged between taking weeks to years, days if you were lucky and extremely self-aware.

The blonde already wanted to give up for the day so he settled into the black grass and opted for admiring the sky in all its glory (and horror). Menma, who hadn't moved since laying down, finally showed that he was still alive, reaching up to scratch his face before returning to his previous position.

It was hard for Naruto to understand how the guy could be so _still_.

And now that he thought about it, in this short time, it was hard to understand most of Menma's actions thus far. He hadn't laughed at a single one of Naruto's jokes and any story that he brought up about Sakura, Kakashi-sensei, Sai, or anybody….never peaked his interest at all. It seemed like the sky was much more entertaining than he was. Menma was so chill and quiet; never once cracking a smile. He almost resembled Sasuke in a lot of ways and Naruto thought that was extremely weird, considering that he was HIS subconscious, not stupid Sasuke's.

The whiskered blonde blinked at the other male and rolled onto his side so that he was looking at him. As if reluctant to ask, his mouth slowly opened and a few seconds went by before he could utter a word. "...Um, Menma…?"

"Hmm?"

"You're supposed to be me, aren't you? You're supposed to like everything that I like and act how I act, aren't you...?" Naruto quired in a soft, low voice. This was the only way he could think to ask the question in the nicest way possible. It's not that he doubted Menma was actually his subconscious; he just found it hard to believe that this was supposed to be him. He most definitely didn't feel that way.

Menma didn't even look away from the red sky and his blonde counterpart could have sworn the bloodied color reflected off his dark eyes. Before his response came a simple shrug. "To an extent, yes."

Naruto couldn't understand how there could be a grey area when it came to this question, but he probed further with another one. "Then why are you kind of different from me? Why do you seem so quiet and sad? I've never even seen you smile once….and I thought my jokes were pretty funny, too! Then I mention Sakura and you can blush, but you can't smile….why?"

"A common misconception." There was no personality or emotion in his voice. His robotic-like tone gave Naruto the shivers. "I am your inner-self, therefore I am your mental state and how you act outwardly doesn't concern me. I am only how you feel on the inside."

A long pause followed, Naruto eyeing Menma up and down in absolute disbelief. This guy was practically the polar opposite of him; he was so still and calm. His voice was so quiet and soft. His face was so relaxed and composed. His entire being was what Naruto was not and for a second, the blonde almost wondered how his life might have been different if he were like this.

Maybe he'd be more like Sasuke?

Or perhaps maybe he was like Sasuke. Maybe deep down, there was nothing really different about them in the first place.

The possibility had Naruto thinking back to the raven-haired Uchiha who had been missing for years now and the throbbing pang of guilt hit him like a wrecking ball. It seemed that being locked inside the cravases of his own mind increased his feelings tenfold and even a little pinch of pain was magnified to something more extreme.

Maybe if he had reached out to Sasuke earlier things would have been different. Sure, they were outwardly different, but that was only because they had endured similar situations and coped with both divergently; Sasuke with the loss of his clan and Naruto as the jinchuuriki with no parents to protect him from the biting whispers of the village. Angry with his traitorous brother, Sasuke wanted power and revenge so he _trained_ for it. From being a prankster to being on a team, Naruto wanted friendship so he _worked_ for it.

And looking at Menma….it was hard to decipher the differences between him and his childhood friend.

The dark-haired entity finally, finally looked away from the sky and peered into the sparkling blues of the blonde. "I won't deny that you and your friend aren't alike. In some ways, you are. But at the moment…." Menma faded off as if trying to pick his next words carefully. "...I am like this because you are lost. Your subconscious has split into two crossroads and you are at a stump. This is what Confound Crisis is and it's effects on me are tremendous.. It's effects on you vary between shinobi. Outwardly, you might not change. Nobody, not even your closest friends, will be able to tell you've reached this point in your life. But it's not the same for me."

Naruto had heard all of that before, but what stuck out to him was the fact that his own inner-self didn't deny the similarities between him and Sasuke. He had grown up admiring the Uchiha, yet he wasn't so sure that being so alike to the revenger was a good thing or not. If he had been in Sasuke's place, would he have followed the same destructive path as his friend had? Would he have abandoned his own team, his own teacher and his own village for the sake of revenge?

He didn't want to know the answer to that.

Instead, he fell silent and a still atmosphere washed over them both. He rolled onto his back again and looked at the reddened sky (had it darkened or was that just him?). Menma hadn't turned away from him, sporting the most emotion-filled face he's ever made thus far with dark eyes that held a subtle sadness.

Naruto got the feeling that maybe his own internal confliction was manifesting inside Menma as well, so he changed the subject to something more light-hearted. "...hey, wait a minute. How do you know all that stuff about Confound Crisis anyway? Aren't you only supposed to know as much as I do?"

With the confused blinking, it seemed as if Menma weren't expecting the sudden question and it took him a few seconds to snap out of the angst Naruto might have thrown his way. "Um….yes, but you do know this. You think that you don't pay attention in class or whenever you study, but you actually do. You simply just suck at the test-taking part of learning."

Naruto glared at the subconscious being, shooting him a playful smirk when his face slightly paled from taking the look seriously." _Thanks_ …..Hey, Menma?"

"How many questions are you going to ask me?"

"Oh, shut up," the blonde playfully retorted with a sharp roll of his eyes. "Your hint hasn't done anything for me. You said to think about what I've always wanted and there are a lot of things, but every answer I give you is wrong. I don't think I know anything else."

The last part may not have been completely true. Naruto knew a lot of things that he's always wanted such as unlimited ramen, Sakura's babies, to piggy-back ride on Grandma Tsunade for an entire day, Sakura's babies, to one day kick Kakashi-sensei's ass in a one-on-one battle…..Sakura's babies. But he felt as if those things were wrong right off the back. None of those wants would spark a Confound Crisis in him.

It had to be something _important_ -something that would significantly change his life for better or for worse depending on what choices he would make.

Everything he thought of was wrong, wrong, _wrong_.

It was like he didn't know at all.

"Of course you do," Menma replied, a faint, reassuring smile gracing his thin lips. "You're just not thinking hard enough."

Not finding comfort in those words, Naruto let out a frustrated groan. "UUUGHH! If I think any harder, I'm going to get constipated and take a shit!" His voice echoed and carried throughout the subconscious land and his final word could be heard repeatedly in the distance, fading more each time. Call it childish, but Naruto couldn't deny the opportunity. "...SHIT!"

His curse echoed again, making the blonde crack a grin.

From the side, Menma was shaking his head at Naruto's immaturity, but the slight amusement that showed on his face was undeniable. He would have laid there contented, listening to Naruto scream inappropriate words at the sky for as long as unconsciousness permitted Naruto to stay had it not been for what happened next.

The piercing caw of a crow startled them both into silence and Menma sat up suddenly as if alarmed by something. His eyes became so sharp and alerted that he practically reminded Naruto of an animal that had just heard the familiar sound of a stalking predator.

The blonde slowly sat up and gazed at him with a slight tilt of his head. But before he had the chance to ask what was wrong, the air filled with various sounds of cracking and crumbling and the ground started to violently tremble beneath them like an earthquake. Through the tremendous shuddering of the world around them, they both struggled to stagger to their feet.

Abruptly, a wild flock of crows flew from their hiding spots in the surrounding trees and took off into the air, their cawing so deafening that Naruto slammed his hands over his ears. The red sky shattered, and as if it were a mere picture, cracks begun to form-even in the orange clouds.

Had it not been for Menma who reached out and grabbed his arm, Naruto would have stumbled backwards and fell into the lake. Being towed away from the waters, Naruto hurried to keep up with his subconscious being without question. He almost wanted to ask what the hell was going on, but he wasn't sure whether he'd be heard over the thundering caws of the birds and the crumbing of the world around them.

However, a sound soon followed, overshadowing everything else in it's enraged thundering. A mighty roar swept over them; a roar distorted in fury and wrath, etched with pain. It sounded familiar to Naruto…..almost _too_ familiar.

The jinchuuriki pulled against Menma's grasp, stopping them in their tracks as Naruto turned in the direction of the prolonged cry of his tailed friend.

That sounded like Kurama. He had heard that roar many times before. He had absolutely zero doubt that it belonged to Kurama. But _this_ roar…

Someone was messing with the seal.

* * *

Minato couldn't remember the last time he had seen Tsunade smile like that. In fact, for a good few years, majority of the time he checked in for an S-Rank mission, she either had a sour look on her face or she seemed extremely drained. He knew she wasn't like that all the time, considering gambling the night away graced her lips with something between a joyous smile and a smug grin. But personally, he never witnessed it without the mentioned being the reason why.

So when he walked back into the infirmary, Kakashi raised an eyebrow at the weird face that he was most likely sporting, watching his sensei take the seat next to him.

"Well?" The silver-haired jonin inquired, slowly leaning towards the older man. "Did she kill you and then bring you back to life with her exceptional medic-skills?"

Minato breathed out hard as if he had been holding his breath since he walked back in. He shook his head. "No. She was happy."

"Happy that you declined the mission?"

"Happy that I accepted it."

The eye that wasn't covered by Kakashi's mask widened, brightening up. "Is that so? Well, I'm excited for you, Minato-sensei. I'm glad that you're putting those things behind you and moving on from…."

Whatever was said after that, Minato hadn't heard him. It wasn't that he had purposely blocked out Kakashi, but his eyes just happened to land elsewhere-specifically on the little figure resting peacefully on the infirmary bed, wrapped up in white blankets. And with his attention went his mind, thinking back to the moments just before the younger blonde had fainted on the streets.

' _The way you're staring kind of creeps me out, Fourth Hokage….'_

Minato wished he hadn't of stared at Naruto so hard to the point of alarming him, but he couldn't help the blissful feeling of nostalgia he got from looking at him. The round structure of his face, the soft expression, the way he smiled, how he seemed so lively...he could see Kushina in that kid. In fact, it was almost as if he were the male version of her, save for the red to blonde ratio.

In his own trance, he stared at the boy seeming so tranquil and undisturbed in his soft slumber. He watched his chest gradually rise and fall, observed the slight parting of his lips that only gave room for a faint snore that sounded like gentle breathing. He almost wanted to reach out and ghost his fingers over those scarred cheeks...maybe stroke his hair-

Kakashi waved his hand in front of Minato's face, snapping him from his dazed ogling. "Sensei?"

Abruptly, the former Hokage jerked his attention away from the sleeping blonde; face growing pale as he wondered where that kind of thinking had come from. It even seemed like his eyes had turned a pale blue, wide and slightly disturbed as he shook his head. "...I-I think I changed my mind...I can't. I don't know why I accepted- I have to go find Lady Tsunade and I have to decline." He started to head for the door, but his arm was grabbed, stopping him in his tracks.

The silver-haired shinobi eyed him with furrowed brows. "No, you don't. Why is this so hard for you to do?"

Unable to admit that his reason for wanting to back out now revolved around the similarity between Naruto and Kushina, Minato shamefully resorted back to his previous excuse. He turned to face his former student with a lowered gaze. "I don't want to lose anymore people on my account. I'm not ready to have more deaths on my conscious. I've yet to get over Kushina's death and that was sixteen years ago. How can I deal with more?"

Kakashi sighed quietly and his grasp fell away. "Well….that's what the life of a shinobi promises us. There is no escaping it, you know this. You've explained it to me many times before."

Minato didn't want to recall such times. Unfortunately for him, he had taken office when things were at its lowest point. War with Iwa left Konoha sucked dry of all its elements-death had washed over the village and it had claimed both Obito and Rin in the process, leaving Kakashi alone. In this time, whenever he had the chance to, he had always checked up on the silver-haired boy to make sure he was doing alright….and sometimes casual conversation turned grim. But it was the only way he could think to console Kakashi then because by that point, he could no longer sugar coat anything.

But that was the Fourth Hokage. He wasn't sure who he was now.

"The one who taught you that is not the same man that you're speaking to now…" Minato murmured softly, almost sadly. "I wish he was, but he's not."

"He is," Kakashi countered firmly. "He's just a wounded man who has been approaching the problem all wrong for sixteen years. Don't you see that Lady Tsunade is giving you a chance to mend your heart at your own pace by putting these kids under your wing?"

In a sense, Minato could see what Lady Tsunade was trying to do. She wanted to appoint him taicho so that he could learn to get close to people again and there was nothing more rewarding in friendship than those you come to trust from your own team. But admittedly, Minato was terrified at the thought of getting too close only to lose them again-he didn't want to be entrusted with lives only to fail as he had failed Obito and Rin as a teacher, Kushina as a husband, and the entire village as their Fourth Hokage.

He wasn't ready to bare that shame again. He didn't want to shut down again. He didn't want to end up in the hospital and burden the nurses with his despondency...with his _depression_.

He just wanted to be a hunter-nin so that he could be alone. All _alone_.

He opened his mouth, but he couldn't say anything to Kakashi.

Hard gaze softening up, Kakashi was the one to speak after a few seconds of silence. "After Obito and Rin, I was a broken man. You know this because you've watched me grow into a quiet, sour shinobi who never gave Gai….or anybody else for that matter, the time of day." His eyes seemed to brightened at the memory as if he remembered something comical. "I was rather mean to Gai, especially...but that's besides the point. My point is that Lady Tsunade is doing for you what the Third did for me. He appointed me a teacher, allowed me to make something out of my wound by passing down what I learned when I lost my friends to my students. I was given Team Seven; I was given a chance to bring about my own happiness out of an amazing squad like them. And Lady Tsunade wants you to do the same with this ANBU team."

"The truth is….death, loss, grief….it's all inevitable," Kakashi muttered quietly with a soothingly soft voice. "As a shinobi, we will lose friends, family and loved ones for the sake of our home, but we must move on. The day Team Seven passed their teamwork test, I moved on with new comrades. I'll never forget Rin and Obito….never," he emphasized that last part firmly, making it easy for Minato to believe his words. "They became my past team when I moved on with the future." A pause followed as the words sunk skin deep and then he asked, "What do you need to put in the past, Minato-sensei?"

The blonde considered that question, but it took him longer than it should have to answer only because it was hard for him to admit what he needed to put behind him. Or more so, he didn't want to put what he needed to behind him.

 _He didn't want to put Kushina behind him._

Kakashi caught his former teacher's conflicted gaze with his own. "I think Kushina would want you to take on this team with pride and your head held high, don't you agree?"

 _He needed to put Kushina behind him because she would want him to._

With a quiet sigh and a faint smile, Minato found resolution. "...Thank you, Kakashi."

Just in time, too-a brunette Nurse with her hair tied up walked into the room. "Excuse me….there are a few visitors for…." She peered down at the clipboard in her hands and squinted her eyes. "...Naruto. They're, um….underaged and need consent in order to see an emergency room patient."

In all the haze and confliction, Minato had almost forgotten about Naruto's teammates. Kakashi had went to go fetch them and tell them what happened with Naruto only to return alone saying that they were preparing some things for him and would join them later.

Kakashi looked to Minato. "I'll sign them in. I'll be right back," he said, following after the nurse to sign everybody in.

After the door closed behind them, Minato was left alone in the room with Naruto. His blue eyes fell away from the door and landed on the sleeping blonde once again. At first he thought to simply sit down and wait for everybody to join them, but he found his gaze locked on Naruto, unmoving and soon his feet carried him across the room and beside Naruto's bed.

He hadn't moved one bit, still captured in his peaceful slumber and Minato tilted his head as he stared at the unconscious boy's face-the face that reminded him so much of Kushina. Even as he slept, looking more like a child rather than a teenager, he resembled her. A little snore could be heard through Naruto's parted lips and Minato had to bite back a frustrated whimper.

Their snores even sounded alike? The similarity between them was starting to get rather _absurd_.

Minato almost thought to back away before he got any weird ideas, but then he noticed Naruto twitch and stopped. His face contorted and his head jerked ever so slightly, but his eyes remained closed, signaling that he was still asleep. Then he moaned.

 _Was he having a bad dream?_

The older blonde peered at him carefully, wondering whether it would be wise to wake him or not. It no longer seemed like his slumber was sweet, but he didn't want to intrude on Naruto's sleep if rest was necessary to his recovery. With a careful hand, he reached out to touch him.

His fingers were just inches from his whiskered cheeks before Naruto stirred again, startling Minato enough to make him pull away.

Naruto's eyes fluttered open-lively blue met with the older blues of Minato's eyes. Awkwardly, though, considering that Minato was practically leaning over him.

The younger male didn't question it though, wiping the sleep out of his eyes and blinking wildly as if to wake himself up. He smiled sleepily at the man next to his bed. "...H-Hokage-sama…?"

Hopefully, he didn't catch the slight twitch of Minato's eye at the name. The former Fourth returned his smile with one full of warmth and greeting. "Welcome back, Naruto…." As nonchalantly as he could muster, he pulled away and put space between him and the younger shinobi. "That title doesn't belong to me anymore so there's no need to regard me with it."

It may have been Minato's imagination, but Naruto's face seemed to dim a little-appearing to be deeply saddened by Minato's disregard of the title that was rightfully his. He tried to sound assuring with his next words. "But….you'll always be worthy of being called that. You used to be Hokage after all."

That was very much true. He knew that whether one was the current Hokage or one of the past, the respect always lingered-and often, so did the title. It was simply an unofficial and unmentioned tradition of Konoha that he wasn't very fond of.

"... _Used to be_ ," Minato stressed through gritted teeth and a forced smile. "Please, just call me Minato. Or Namikaze….whatever you're comfortable with."

The blonde's blues grew wide and he stared at him with uncertainty before, testing the waters by whispering, "Minato….heh…" Following that was one of the most cutest giggles Minato has ever heard in his life. Obvious excitement exploded out of Naruto. "Haha! It's kind of weird jumping to a first name basis with a former Hokage. Are you sure about that...?"

Luckily, Minato was able to shake himself out of his 'Naruto just did the cutest thing ever' stupor quickly enough to avoid an awkward silence. "Ah...I'm fine with it," he muttered, casually touching his face to make sure it hadn't grown hot from embarrassment. "Besides...I suppose you'll be saying my name a lot more."

After a few seconds of stiffened air, Naruto's face flushed.

Minato raised an eyebrow at the younger male, momentarily unaware of the dirty twist the mind of a teenager could put on his words. He didn't realize it until he repeated what he had said in his own head and sighed. "...I mean that I've accepted Lady Tsunade's offer."

After the mortification of retrieving words incorrectly, the little jinchuuriki brightened up and he sat up in his bed with a large grin plastered on his face and sparkling blue orbs. "You mean you're going to be our taicho then?!" He asked in loud exhilaration.

Minato nodded. "Yes, that's right..."

A little more than thrilled, Naruto ended up practically rambling on in his anticipation and Minato was internally frightened. "No way! Working under a former Hokage….that's amazing!" He jumped in his bed excitedly and squeed like a child. "I bet not many people can say that, huh?! You're going to have lots of fun, I promise, Hokage-sama...OH, I mean Minato! No, Minato-taicho! Sorry! You'll teach us lots of cool Hokage-level moves and jutsu, right? You won't regret your decision, we're a great team! Trust me, you'll like everybody!"

The enthusiasm on his face was more than captivating to Minato. As Naruto babbled on and on, the former Hokage stared and him, lost in the beauty in Naruto's face that was so very similar to Kushina's.

It was just her excited outburst when he told her that he was going to be the Fourth Hokage. She had jumped him then, and Minato would be lying if he said he wasn't half-expecting Naruto to leap out of that bed and...

Naruto stopped and frowned. "Huh….Minato…? Why are you crying?"

"...!"

 _Was he now?_

In slow disbelief, Minato raised a hand to his face and found that a tear had escaped, having ran down his cheek. The moment his fingertip felt the wet trail it left behind, he swiped the sleeve of his shirt over his face. Once, twice. Three times. Gods, he was embarrassed-just how many times had he made a fool of himself today? He had ran away after a childish outburst, he had stared at Naruto too long and caused him discomfort, he had given a most likely hormonal teenager the wrong idea, and now he was crying in front of said teenager.

What made it worse was that this kid obviously idolized him as a former Hokage and the last thing he probably expected was to see the legendary, flee-on-sight Yellow Flash tearing up right in front of him like a….like a….

A soft warmth caressed the side of Minato's face and he almost jerked away from the touch, startled by the soothing gesture.

Naruto had reached out for him and his small thumb wiped away another runaway tear that Minato could not hold back. Then another one. Minato saw Kushina wiping away his pain. He saw her smile, saw the reassuring sparkle in her eyes. Her lips moved, but he couldn't hear her. He couldn't remember what she sounded like anymore. It had been too long and his memory of her was stained in blood as red as her hair. All he saw was this bright orange color.

He almost reached out for Naruto, too. Almost touched his whiskered cheeks in return.

 _Almost._

But then he heard footsteps coming down the hallway, echoing to him like a warning and he pulled back from the blonde to regain his composure, wiping at his face one last time. The door opened and Kakashi walked into the room, followed by the same four shinobi from earlier.

Each one of them had their hands full; the pink-haired girl carried a basket full of what seemed to be food pills and behind her was the shy-looking kunoichi holding something wrapped up in aluminum foil. Last to follow was the pale boy who Minato had seen following Tsunade's group and the female with the long blonde hair, both shuffling into the room with a bouquet of flowers in their hands.

When they had last spoken to him back at the office, they had introduced themselves, but Minato wasn't so sure about trusting his memory. If he remembered their names correctly; Sakura, Hinata, Sai and Ino. But out of fear of being wrong, he figured he would ask them himself to be sure….after he apologized for his outburst back in Tsunade's office, of course.

Sakura walked over to Naruto in a hurry, putting her basket down on the table sitting beside the bed so that she could slap her hand on his forehead with a loud smack.

The blonde looked like he was almost pushed back by the force. "Ow!"

"Grow a pair, Naruto," the kunoichi growled, keeping her hand on his forehead for a few seconds before pulling back. "I was only checking to make sure you didn't have a fever or anything."

"How about instead of hitting me, you try something normal like, I don't know-'hello, Naruto. We heard about what happened and we came to make sure you were okay?' What am I getting hit for?" The bedridden shinobi inquired with crossed arms and a pout, mutterly immaturely to himself,"It's not my fault I ended up in the hospital..."

"She means well, Naruto." Sai chimed with a kind smile that followed.

"She means my death that's what she means."

With the exception of Minato, Sai and Sakura who glared at Naruto in annoyance and started whacking him in the head playfully, everyone broke into a choir of laughter. It's not that Minato didn't find what Naruto said funny; in fact, it had been hilarious, but it was hard to laugh when somebody was scowling at you.

Eyes narrowing slightly and threateningly, Sai eyed Minato. But he was discreet about it that it seemed like nobody else caught him in the act besides him, the target of it all.

Timidly, Hinata inched towards Naruto's bed and held out her aluminum-wrapped present out to him. "Hello, Naruto. We heard about what happened and we came to make sure you were okay." A small, nervous smiled tugged at her tiny tips and her cheeks reddened ever so slightly when the blonde accepted her gift to him. "Are you alright? Sakura bought you food pills and I made you homemade bread. And Ino and Sai even got you some flowers, too…."

Ino spoke up quick, waving off the other girl. "Well, the ones in Sai's hands are for you at least. I was going to give you bluebells but Sai suggested the orange blossoms since you seem to appreciate that color so much." Ino peered to the art oriented shinobi who was holding the brightly colored bouquet and watched as he handed Naruto the orange plants.

Minato noted Sai placed him back under his narrowed scrunity, but he didn't show that he took notice and instead continued to feign indifference as best he could.

"And um….." The blonde kunoichi surprised everyone when she walked over to former Hokage who hadn't said one word since they arrived, holding a bouquet of dandelions.

"...these are for you, Lord Fourth. I thought maybe you'd like to make a wish." She spoke so fast that her words jumbled over one another, making her nervousness clear. "It seems like you need one. I know you only need one, but my dad says blowing from a dozen brings good fortune and I thought you'd like to..." She trailed off, obviously nervous and instead just jerked the flowers out towards him silently, gazing anywhere, but at him.

Minato had been so caught up wondering why Sai was regarding him with hidden hostility that most of Ino's words had gone over his head. He stared at the offered flowers with blank blues, noticing that everyone was waiting for him to accept the gift. Even Naruto was, motioning for him to take the flowers when their eyes met.

Turning back to Ino, he caught her still gaze, feeling as if the light in her eyes were her pleading for him to take it. Her face held such sincerity that Minato had to wonder if the idea to bring him flowers was all hers. With a warm smile, he took the bouquet of dandelions from the girl. "Thank you, Ino…."

At the mention of her name, her eyes grew wide and her jaw momentarily went slack, her face lighting up like a child at the sight of a candy shop. "You remembered my name, Fourth…!"

"Ah, Ino….." Naruto chided with obvious obscured eagerness. "...we don't call him that anymore. It's Minato-taicho, now."

If Minato were to say that everyone in that room was not only surprised, but happy about the news, he'd be lying. Kakashi was proud of his choice and it was plain in the way his eyes flickered to his former teacher approvingly. Hinata clapped excitedly; that's a good reaction. Ino and Sakura were smiling, and Naruto was grinning-grinning at Minato in particular.

But Sai…..wasn't.

He just kind of stared...with a _threatening_ dimness in his practically black eyes.

* * *

 **A/N: I fINALLy updated this-school has been so mean to me and so I wasn't reall inspired to write until I got a nice comment from a dumb girl with a computer (that is literally her name) on Archive who inspired me to write this chapter~**

 **I hope there weren't any mistakes, I tried to beta read it as best as I could. R &R would be appreciated and like I said, reviews/comments make me update. Trust me they do...at least the good quality kinds of comments :) thanks for reading!**


	4. Chapter 4

Sai sat the furthest from Naruto's bed, cooped up in the furtherest corner of the hospital room in comfortable silence, thin pencil tracing mysterious lines in his paper. He held his notebook rather close to him, almost protectively out of fear of being snuck up on by prying eyeballs. Though it wasn't often, he'd sometimes look up from his various sketches of the Fourth Hokage and peer at the group by Naruto's bed.

An hour since he first woke up, Naruto was finally submitting to Lady Tsunade's charge on him. The nurse claimed that the Hokage demanded he get a long rest and remain in bed for a least a few hours due to his earlier incident, much to the boy's annoyance. More than a couple of times, he had made attempts to escape the room by falsing asserting a need for a bathroom break, but every time Sakura added Sai should go with him, Naruto simply sunk back into his bed in defeat with a groaning, "nevermind, jeez….."

Which was quite a bummer in Sai's opinion considering that if he were to go to the bathroom with Naruto, at least he'd be able to continue the naked portrait of Naruto he never finished. It was hard to gain inspiration for it when he didn't know how big (or small) the blonde was.

Accuracy and details were very important to Sai, and he was positive that none of the girls were going to allow him to draw their nude portraits considering that when he tried, they turned red before chasing him down and showering him relentlessly in their seemingly unlimited kunai.

And by 'they', he meant Ino and Sakura. Hinata simply blushed and fainted.

"So, what did you do before? You're not the current Hokage so you had to have been doing something else, right?"

Looking up from his notebook, Sai laid his eyes on the group before him; Naruto's brightened face, Ino and Sakura's awed expressions, Hinata's innocent smile...even Kakashi seemed happy. Seeing it all made Sai wonder whether he was being too suspicious of the Fourth Hokage, of a man that he was judging based off of uncertain evidence and an odd sensation that resided in the pit of his stomach every time he looked at him.

Was his sensory skills picking up on something strange?

Danzo-sama had always told him to trust his own intuition. He told him that when he had a bad feeling, it was for a good reason and he should never disregard it, even in the most confusing of situations.

Sai glanced down at his notebook again, eyes scanning over the various sketches of the Fourth Hokage's face and structure. However, no matter how many times he looked over them, he couldn't pinpoint his own suspicion.

As he followed Lady Tsunade and the other medic-nins to Naruto's room, he had passed by the Fourth on the way. According to Kakashi-sensei, he had fainted on the spot a couple of minutes after bumping into him and the former Hokage.

Sai was well aware of the fact that Naruto was prone to fainting and headaches whenever the seal was being weakened, but the question was: how was it being weakened?

When he had tried asking the Fifth, she didn't seem very keen on answering him and though she stood firmly on obliviousness, it was obvious to Sai that she knew more than she was letting on.

Of course, his job wasn't to protect Naruto, but rather the people around him when and if the seal ever does weaken to the point of Kurama taking over. He was supposed to brief Tsunade on his condition at least once every two days. He wasn't supposed to figure out what was going on with Naruto and why.

But the former Hokage comes into the picture and the fainting becomes extreme all of the sudden?

The dark-haired shinobi turned the pages away, flipping backwards out of sympathy for the headache all this thinking was causing him. He skimmed through all the drawings of Ino, Sakura and Hinata. The quick sketches of Kakashi and Yamato, and eventually stopped at one of Naruto.

In it, he was smiling and it wasn't one of his large, goofy smirks or winning, teeth-flashing grins. It was actually a rather subtle and soft smile, a smile that gave Sai a huge wave of deja-vu that left his eyebrows knitting together.

He flipped back to the little sketches of the Fourth, then back to Naruto again.

 _Fourth._

 _Naruto._

 _Fourth._

 _Naruto._

 _Fourt-_

Suddenly, Naruto's frenzied outburst snapped him out of his own thoughts and pulled his attention away from the pictures. "What?! You were a hunter-nin….!" He almost sounded like a squeaking child, carrying out the 'nin' in a prolonged squeal. "I didn't even know Konoha had their own Hunter-nin organization! That is awesome! Take that, Mist Village! You're not the only one with badass Hunter-nins!"

Despite how loud Naruto was and how uncomfortably close he was to the Fourth Hokage's face, Minato's voice was surprisingly relaxed when he responded. "You should lower your voice-"

"Man, and I thought being an ANBU was cool-!"

"He said LOWER YOUR VOICE, dingus!" Ino growled, holding up a threatening fist that had the blonde scooting away from her with an amusingly paled face of fear. Almost immediately after did she smile, flashing the Fourth an innocent and kind expression. "My apologizes, Fourth Hokage. Naruto is a complete loser."

"HEY!"

In the corner of his eye, Sai caught Sakura sneer and turn her nose up snootily. "You're one to talk," she whispered under her breath, crossing her arms over her chest.

The moment Ino jerked her head in the direction of the pink-haired shinobi, all hell seemed to break loose and suddenly the two were squaring off in a battle of name calling and insults, unfortunately getting the Fourth Hokage and Naruto caught in the middle. Hinata's eyes darted between the two before she strategically backed away from the battle, finding herself to be content with one of the safe corners of the room as Sai had been since coming here.

Kakashi played it smart and kept his distance, exchanging awkward expressions with the Hokage and the jinchuuriki.

"Do they always do this?" Minato inquired quietly, his features caught somewhere between very amused and extremely concerned.

"Kind of…." Kakashi responded.

Naruto shot the Fourth a shit-eating, yet reassuring grin before saying, "Prepare yourself for the pain that is Sakura and Ino. They'll make you want to Ha-RUN-o away….!"

Whether the former Hokage caught the punchline or not, Sai wasn't sure, but everybody else did and nobody was laughing. Unless Hinata's faint smile counted, but he didn't think it did.

The only person who was laughing was Naruto himself, and it was honestly one of the saddest things Sai has ever seen in his life.

Suddenly, both Ino and Sakura turned on the blonde, faces so red and expressions so pissed, that Sai would have considered drawing that exact moment if his life wouldn't be endangered as a result. "DON'T SCARE HIM OFF, STUPID NARUTO. WE'RE NOT THAT BAD!" Their voices had harmonized so ridiculously perfect, that it was actually quite horrifying.

Sai was amused, however, it startled everybody else, especially Naruto who had practically leapt out of his bed and into the Fourth Hokage's arms.

"I was just kidding!" The whiskered male whined.

Ino balled one of her fists and held it up towards Naruto threateningly. "How come you didn't make some smart remark with my surname too, huh?!"

Something told Sai that there was about to be another Ino-Sakura war coming up, and he already had took one to the face when he was in the middle of one. The painful memory had him going back to his sketching. This time, he started a quick sketches of both Naruto and the Fourth on one page.

"I couldn't think of one with your name!"

"Or maybe he just doesn't like you like everybody else in this room," Sakura retorted.

"Whatever! The Fourth Hokage likes me! I got him flowers!"

To Sai, the silence that followed seemed to be due to the lack of comeback from Sakura's side. It was apparent on her face that she had no follow up and when she turned and glanced at the Fourth who appeared mildly afraid, she shoved past Ino in a hurry.

"I KNOW BETTER FLOWERS-BE RIGHT BACK!"

The blonde kunoichi, in turn, chased after her. "HEY, THAT'S CHEATING! FLOWERS RUN IN MY FAMILY SO YOU CAN'T TAKE THAT IDEA FROM ME!"

"WATCH ME, PIGGY-CHAN!"

The sound of their bounding footsteps and Ino yelling after the pink-haired female faded within seconds, and Kakashi peered in the direction of the Fourth before casually adding in a little reassuring input, "those two aren't always like that."

According to the halfhearted laugh and the awkward smile, it didn't seem like Minato had been thoroughly convinced about it. Still, he managed a small, "I hope not. I haven't dealt with kids in quite awhile." Though it was pretty obvious to Sai that he was referring to their actions and attitudes, not them personally as shinobi, some people just didn't catch on to that.

"BWAH? K-K-KIDS?!" Naruto sputtered, gawking at the Fourth Hokage with obvious disappointment. "Hey, who puts KIDS in ANBU?! We're not kids! Right, Kakashi-sensei?"

The silver-haired shinobi stared.

"...Sai and Hinata aren't."

With a long sigh, Naruto fell back on the hospital bed and submerged himself completely under the white blankets. "Aw, jeez! First the Hokage calls me a kid and then my sensei confirms it right in front of the Hokage. This is embarrassing…!"

In the seconds that followed, Kakashi, Hinata and Minato cracked in light hearted smiles and laughter and Sai's pencil broke. The lead literally snapped off and the pale shinobi cocked an eyebrow at the now useless utensil, his quick sketch ruined by its sudden defeat. The former Hokage's smile had been messed up and he looked like he had a deep frown on his face rather than the straight expression Sai had been going for.

He should have brought paintbrushes, instead.

Leaning back in his chair, he looked over the drawings silently. And then something hit him.

Sai put down the sketchbook and stood up, grabbing everybody's attention without meaning to.

"Where are you going, Sai?" Naruto probed, having popped out from under his blanket cocoon from earlier.

The pale shinobi turned to the blonde, almost too suddenly as if startled by the question. His eyes darted between him and Minato for a few seconds and then he smiled. "Somewhere…." He murmured, not really focused on answering the question as he hurried out of the room. Kakashi eyed him curiously as he passed by, but Sai had ignored him well.

Now in the hallway, Sai simply walked a few paces from the door before finding a place against the wall to take a breather.

Perhaps he was thinking too much about this, being too suspicious about something that he wasn't completely educated on.

All he knew about was the second seal on Naruto's back and how it suppressed Kurama in some way. Lady Tsunade hadn't briefed him enough when he was assigned to the ANBU squad as an "extra member." Nobody else besides Kakashi and Yamato-sensei were aware of the fact that Sai was simply there to watch over Naruto when she couldn't.

It wasn't his job to know anything further, right? Though he had grown close to Naruto in the time they spent together, it wasn't his job to help Naruto. He was just supposed to help the Hokage keep an eye on him. That's it.

 _That's it._

Sai told himself that repeatedly. _That's it. that's it._

 _That's it._

From now on, he was going to accept the former Hokage as his squad leader without holding any suspicion towards him. He would play along and continue to watch over Naruto like he was assigned to do. He would report to Lady Tsunade at least once every two days like he was supposed to.

 _That's it._

Sai turned to return back to the room, ready to put on another fake smile when he stopped in his tracks at the sight of Kakashi-sensei talking to a nurse a few feet away. With his back to him, he couldn't see Sai so he didn't even bother hiding. Instead, he stayed and watched.

The nurse was the same one from before, the one who had summoned him to sign everyone in to see Naruto. Their exchange was quick and brief, and when it was over, Kakashi brushed past her and proceeded for the stairs. On the other hand, she remained where she was for a little bit before her eyes landed on Sai.

Her eyes narrowed for a split second before she spun around and headed in the other direction.

* * *

Minato pressed his back against the cold bark of the dead tree, unaware that fear had swallowed him up to the point of lacking respiration. He was holding his breath, he was sweating, his heart was throbbing harder than it ever had before, pounding in his ears like a warning. Rubatosis could not challenge the deafening thud of his beating organ now.

If there was one feeling that was worse than the pain of being alone or than that of knowing that he would never see Kushina's beautiful face again….this was it.

It was this same recurring nightmare that never seemed to fail at bringing Minato's worst fears to life. Everytime he woke up in this world, he was wearing the same white coat that he had refused to look at for years. The same white coat that flurried down and behind him like a wave everywhere he walked, the same white coat with the red kanji letters for a title he never should have adopted...the same white coat he wore proudly on the night the Nine Tails had nearly destroyed Konoha. The worse part of it all was that it was knotted shut in the front and sewed to his uniform underneath.

The realization that he was unable to take it off was unpleasant enough in Minato's mind. The world around him could have been the most beautiful place he had ever seen and being stuck wearing that coat would still categorize as a nightmare.

The area that always served as his nightmarish realm was a never-ending forest of grotesquely twisted, dead trees and lingering vines that looped in every direction, a sky that was pitch black with no stars and no moon, and a ground that knew no grass, only soil that was blacker than the skies dark above.

In this nightmare, the same thing happened each time.

Despite the impending doom that he knew awaited him, he could do nothing else but walk. And he could hope. He could hope that the beast wouldn't find him, that he would wake up before it even knew he had been here, sparing him a night of torture and the classic game of cat and mouse. He was tired of the dread that befell him when he heard the quaking of the ground under his feet. He was tired of taking off at the sound of a piercing roar. He was tired of being _mouse_.

But alas, what he was tired of doing or _being_ did not matter in a world so cold. He didn't want to wear that Hokage coat, yet it was stitched to him like a second layer of skin. What did this hellish place care that he didn't want to be pursued by this beast?

With his back pressed tightly against the tree that prodded his skin with its sharp edges, Minato squeezed his eyes shut at the low growl that echoed a few feet away. Each step it took shook the world beneath the former Hokage, and he was mustering up all of his will power to restrain his fight or flight urge. He was tugging at his coat nervously, his breathing was now ragged and prolonged. Another growl and it's reeking breath practically smacked Minato in the face.

Oh god. He just wanted to _run_. But Minato had been through this too many times to count, and he knew what running resulted in. His best chances laid within hiding from the thing, and if he dared to make a break for it, the monster would surely see him. And if it didn't see him, it would smell him. And it would chase him _down_.

A second or two went by, and Minato could no longer hear the beast breathing. Not even a low growl or snarl. He started to count.

 _One, two, three…._

The Fourth Hokage tumbled forward, having launched himself to the ground a second before a horrifying slash boomed through the nightmarish world. The tree he had been leaning against was sliced in half and lifelessly thrown to the side, colliding with other trees that cried with crunches and thuds.

Minato didn't even look back. He simply jumped to his feet and started running, nearly stumbling when the ground quivered under the weight of the enormous beast that now chased him. Every vine that blocked his path, he shoved away. If he nearly ran into one of those deformed trees, he used his hands to his advantage and pushed himself off of it for a quick maneuver. He ducked under the warped branches, he leaped over the aberrant roots sticking out of the ground.

He did everything he could as a desperate attempt to get away from this monster.

But in the end, it was never enough. And it seemed that it never would be for he once again reached a familiar clearing. It was a wide, treeless arena with grass that grew even taller than Minato himself. And as he did every time, in a split second he weighed his options before racing for the meadow. He ducked into the tall grass quickly, using his hands to pave a path for himself. For a while, he maneuvered through the grasses and then crouched low when he felt he had traveled deep enough, taking a moment to calm his nerves and regain his breathing so that he wouldn't give away his position.

The monster's movements could still be heard, but they were faded, quiet and uncertain. It would take a small step, and agonizingly long seconds would pass before it took another, obviously trying to pinpoint Minato in the grass, but having trouble doing so.

He placed a finger to the ground in a futile attempt to trace its position, but to no avail.

There was nothing for quite a while. The silence was agonizing and frightening, but it was too long for a creature that should have caught his scent by now or sensed his chakra.

Assuming that it left, Minato poked his head out carefully and was greeted with the pleasure of seeing nothing. As far as he could see being surrounded by stalkings of grass, that is.

At this point, Minato would walk. And he did. He walked until the subtle chattering of his teeth stopped, until the beating of his heart calmed, until his fear had subsided. And until he no longer felt suffocated by this maze of vegetation.

When he found his way out of the tall grass field, Minato was greeted by a young, beautiful and familiar face. A small girl with dark chestnut hair that reached her shoulders stood before him, hands clasped behind her back with a smile on her face, looking as if she had been waiting for him. Her eyes burned bright with a friendliness this dream always seemed to lack, another reason besides familiarity, that drew Minato closer to her.

Despite the horrors that he knew were about to occur.

"Minato-sensei..." Rin Nohara whispered, her voice alluring and beckoning him close. She extended out a hand towards him, a little giggle pushing past her lips. "I was waiting for you, Minato-sensei. I was looking for you, Minato-sensei. I looked _all over_ , Minato-sensei."

Legs suddenly feeling like jello, Minato's walk towards Rin became difficult. His feet felt heavy, but he couldn't stop even if it did feel like he was walking in quicksand.

She felt like a siren to him, using her vocal cords to lead him to his ultimate demise. Her innocent gaze was locked on him like a predator to it's prey, but the kind light in his former student's eyes somehow remained, hiding the true evils that resided there.

"All over, Minato-sensei," she repeated, her tone more forced this time. The fingers of her outstretched hand twitched impatiently and for a second, it seemed like her face had twisted into something grotesque-like a nasty sneer of some sorts. "Sensei. There's so much _blood_."

And no word in the English language could explain how horrifying it was for Minato to see the momentary lapse in her expression, for when Rin was alive, he had never seen such a disgusting look on her pretty face. She was too kindhearted to be capable of such a cruel smile.

Her hand closed into a small fist and when she opened it once more, the former Hokage clenched his jaw at the sight of her blood-stained palm. He never knew just whose blood that was, but a nasty feeling in his gut always told him that it wasn't hers.

Rin turned her hand palm-down and the stain seemed to turn into more blood, dripping as if she had slit an artery. Something in her eyes was extremely unsettling; she watched it with a monstrous gleam. "Look at it," she said as if it were a command.

By this point, Minato's only wish was to get as far away as possible, from Rin, from this place, from this _nightmare._

The more she spoke and the more contemptuous she sounded, the more weary Minato grew. But no matter how much he may have wanted to turn back and flee into the maze of the tall grass, his feet wouldn't allow him to. His mind wanted one thing, but his body was doing another. The way Rin beckoned with her fingers and the way his body responded by inching closer was like a puppeteer pulling his puppet forward by invisible strings.

"Useless…." Came a familiar voice that echoed from behind Minato.

Suddenly the blonde no longer felt bound by Rin and he stopped dead in his tracks, a strange anger bubbling inside of him. Minato turned his head in the direction of the voice, not surprised to find that mysterious masked man standing there.

He wasn't sure what part of his past this man was from, but he did know that he knew this voice from somewhere. That deep, mocking tone didn't sit well with him though, so he figured this guy wasn't a friend of his. There was no way that he could be when the only thing that comes out of his mouth was something so nasty.

"If anybody deserves the title of the _Joke_ Hokage, it would be you, Minato Namikaze."

"You're supposed to be the leader and you can't protect _anybody_."

Minato hated those words so much.

He hated those words because they were true. He had admitted that truth to himself years ago and he didn't need to hear it from anybody else. He didn't need some man hiding behind a mask to tell him that it was true in such a mocking voice. He _already_ knew.

A warm hand touched his and he turned around to see a young Kushina staring up at him, both of her small hands wrapped around one of his. It only took Minato a quick flicker of his gaze to find that Rin was gone, replaced by a beautiful girl with red hair cascading down her back like a bloody waterfall. Kushina looked exactly the same as she had the first day she moved into his class back at the academy, same clothes, same shoes, same gleam in her eyes.

The only difference was that she didn't look intimidating. In fact, she looked….sad. She was frowning and it seemed as if she were on the verge of tears. There was pain in her eyes and her skin was even paler than normal, appearing more sickly than healthy. The only thing that Minato could see in her pupils was _death_ and _sorrow_.

"Minato….." She whimpered, voice already broken even though she hadn't started crying yet. "Minato...how? How could you come up with such an idea….!"

The former Hokage's brows furrowed in confusion. He wasn't sure what she was talking about, but he managed to take both of her smaller hands in his bigger ones as a comforting gesture. In response, she tried to yank free as if angered by him, but he held her firm. He wanted to ask her what she meant.

But when his mouth opened, nothing came out.

"You killed _us_." She spat. "You killed us because you can't protect anybody."

When she said _"us"_ echoed in the back of Minato's mind like a broken record. Who exactly was _"us"_? Was she referring to herself and the village as _"us"?_

He couldn't possible imagine Kushina saying such harsh words. She wasn't that type of person and she would never blame Minato for being the reason her life, and so many other's lives, had been lost that night.

She didn't think that way at all.

"You killed us, Minato. How could you?"

Suddenly, Kushina tugged free from Minato's grasp and she backed up, hands resting protectively over the lump in her tummy. But where she touched her stomach, she smeared a red liquid over her clothes, over the small bump of her body.

Her hands were covered in blood.

And when Minato looked down and raised his own hands, he found that his had also been stained in the same dangerous red.

* * *

Karin couldn't believe how compassionate these Konoha people were. It was hard to decide whether she should be grateful that they were this stupid, sympathetic or disgusted. The moment she heard the door to her room, she looked up with a brightened expression, expecting to see Sasuke (as she did almost every time), but was disappointed to see one of those ANBU members at the entrance.

The interior of the village's hospital was really nice, nicer than Karin expected it to be. Then again, she never lived in the most gorgeous of places so this was probably because her expectations were so low to begin with. All the underground stations and caves she usually occupied didn't have such pleasant hospitals with clean air and smooth spotless floors.

Actually, they didn't have hospitals at all.

According to her escorts, they were making their way to the examination floor of the facility. The first floor was made specifically for emergencies that needed be taken in right away while the upper floors were for less-threatening occasions.

Pushed forward and almost tripping over her own feet, Karin furrowed her eyebrows in vexation and glared over her shoulder at the masked shinobi. Her glasses sat too forward on her face now. "You know what, PAL-"

"Stop slowing down suddenly and maybe I won't push you." He said, whatever emotion that might have been on his face completely hidden by the hyena mask. "We don't have all day."

The redhead sighed, feeling the uncomfortable position of her glasses that now sat loosely on her nose. With her restrained hands, Karin forced them back up with the back of her hand before picking up her pace to walk close behind her second escort, the brown-haired man she was used to seeing around-what was his name again?

"H-Hey, you!"

He didn't even turn around. "Yes?"

"What's your name...?"

There was a long silence as if he were contemplating telling her his name or not. He even glanced back at her with a hint of suspicion in his dark eyes which surprised Karin.

If she were dangerous, she would have either escaped a long time ago or caused too much trouble for them to even bother with her. She knew she wasn't dangerous, at least not in a combatant way. She wasn't strong enough to break past their security….and besides, she had been waiting for Sasuke to come and rescue her. If there was anyone they should be worrying about, it was him.

Eventually, he came to that conclusion and answered her question. "Yamato."

That was it! She had heard his name before many times, but for some reason it often slipped her mind when it actually mattered.

"Yamato…." Karin whispered quietly as if testing the name with her own mouth. "I don't get how I can't remember such a simple name-anyway, am I allowed to ask a question? Or is this the kind of thing where I have no say so at all and I should just remain silent so that you don't take away my three meals a day?" Though she spoke this almost mockingly, it was an actual concern. If they would take away her meals, like hell she would risk that.

"You can be quiet-" The ANBU member growled.

"We won't starve you for asking a question," Yamato cut in, shooting the masked man behind them a look. "Our system isn't that dense."

Karin found it kind of difficult to hide the grin that threatened her lips, but when Yamato turned back around, she made sure to stick her tongue out at the ANBU member. If he was going to retaliate in any sort of way, she squandered it by quickly speeding to Yamato's side for protection.

"So...what am I going to be examined for exactly?"

"You're not going to be examined," Yamato murmured. "In case you didn't know, it's flu season. All you're getting is a simple vaccination and then we're taking you back to your block. You won't be there very long."

Karin froze, and the ANBU member tried to push her forward again, but she didn't budge an inch. In an instant, all the color left her face at the word 'vaccination.' Every time she heard that word, all she could picture was long, pointed needles ready to impale her perfect skin and suck all the blood from her body. She'd be lying if she said she didn't dread vaccinations for that very reason.

Yamato had stopped, too. Though Karin tried not to look so nervous, it seemed that he caught onto her obvious fear and his usually solid expression softened a little. "It's just a little poke."

"I KNOW IT'S JUST A LITTLE POKE!" Karin countered loudly, practically overwhelming Yamato's voice with her shriek. "That is not the problem!" With the way the brunette shinobi raised an eyebrow at her, she caught onto the defensive tone she had adopted and tried to sound as casual as possible. "...I just don't understand how you Konoha people can be caring enough to give a prisoner a flu shot."

"I wonder the same thing..." the ANBU-nin added, receiving a deadly glare from Yamato. "What? I do. Sorry for having an opinion, I guess."

The brunette's gaze flickered back to Karin. "It's probably more for us than you. If you catch it, then you can spread it through the village by being held here."

"Even more of a reason not to get it!" The redhead declared.

"Is this hostility I'm sensing?"

"If I go down, you can all go down with me." The idea of bringing sickness to the entire Konoha village made Karin wonder just how proud Sasuke would be of her. It didn't seem like he cared about this place anymore and if she was the cause of its downfall….maybe he would be grateful to her. Maybe he would even like her more. "It would benefit Sasuke..." She whispered under her breath, but loud enough to be heard.

"It would definitely benefit Sasuke if you died." Yamato responded, expression void of all emotion besides sympathy. "Don't you think Sasuke would have attempted to rescue you by now if your life truly mattered to him? We could have found no need for you and killed you already."

Karin's fists balled and she gritted her teeth, eyes narrowing at the false accusation.

Was Yamato serious? Was he seriously accusing Sasuke of being so heartless? Sasuke wasn't. Sasuke cared about her and she knew that he did. He needed her just as much as she needed him. They were a team; he was the brawns and she was the brains. He fought and she backed him up whenever he needed it. And even if he didn't need her….even if she was completely useless to him, he would have still came for her. Wouldn't he?

"He's probably just planning for-"

"Planning takes more than a couple of weeks, huh?" Yamato asked.

At this point, Karin almost wanted to punch his lights out. For a second, she wondered who he thought he was for making such a claim on Sasuke when he didn't know anything about him. But then she wondered what she knew about Sasuke herself. Often, he surprised her as well. Often what she thought he would do, he'd do the opposite. And often, he made heartless choices.

Her fists relaxed at her sides and her challenging gaze dropped to the floor. Though she felt her own defeat, no longer being able to defend Sasuke, she fell silent without admitting it.

Yamato stared at her, accepting his victory with silent sportsmanship. He didn't bother to pursue the topic any further and instead moved towards Karin to place a comforting hand on her shoulder. He opened his mouth to say something, but whatever he planned on saying was interrupted by a loud thudding from a room a few doors down.

"Hold him down! HOLD HIM DOWN!" A feminine voice yelled in a commanding voice.

It seemed that Karin was completely forgotten in that moment as both Yamato and the masked shinobi rushed down the hallway, leaving her behind in her restraints. Though the thought to escape crossed her mind for a second, Karin instead followed them in a slow walk, finding herself less interested in running away and more curious to see what was going on.

When Yamato opened the door, Karin was hit with a wild and powerful presence.

The closer she got, the more wild the presence of chakra got. It felt as if someone's emotions were completely unstable and therefore, their chakra was not flowing within them calmly, but rather bouncing off the walls, unconcealed and undisciplined. Any sensory type ninja of high level would probably be as overwhelmed as Karin was feeling now.

Cautiously, she poked her head into the room.

Yamato and the ANBU-nin were on one side of the room, both assisting a woman with untamed black hair that reached her upper back. From the look of things, it seemed like she had stumbled backwards and fallen-most likely from the shock of that runaway chakra that Karin was sensing. They were helping her to her feet and when she was up again, she thanked them curtly and hurried across the room.

"Hold on a second!" Yamato called. "Are you alright, Kurenai?"

"I'm fine!" The kunoichi replied in a tight voice. Karin's eyes were practically glued to the woman, following her as she crossed the room.

She pushed through the crowd of medic-nins surrounding the examination table and through a gap, Karin could see that there was a man being held down.

At first, Karin almost thought that she was looking at Sasuke's former teammate, Naruto. She had seen the boy a few times before, but something looked different this time around. Adjusting her glasses, she squinted her eyes for a better look and immediately felt stupid for mistaking the two. His blonde hair was spiky, but it was longer. His build was also blatantly bigger; this was a full grown man, not a teenage boy.

Whoever he was, it was obvious that he was the source of the feral chakra.

He was twitching violently in an unconscious state and if it weren't for everybody holding him down, he might have fell off the table.

The way he moved reminded Karin of how Sasuke moved in his sleep sometimes. He would often murmur his brother's name and jerk in his slumber like it would help rid himself of the night terrors. It was almost as if he were having a dream that was so nightmarish that his actual limbs were flipping out. She usually addressed the problem by using her own chakra as a means to calm him down. Though not everybody's chakra stayed as warm and bright as it originally was a birth, Karin had not allowed hers to grow cold. It was because of her determination to remain compassionate that Sasuke's nights were not as dreadful as they could have been.

Karin knew very well that she did not owe the Konoha people anything, nor did she owe this man anything, but if she were in such a state, she would have wanted someone to help her, too. She hated to admit it, but she wasn't as mean as she let on.

And sometimes she hated herself for being so nice.

Without much effort, Karin tapped into her sensory ability and her vision blackened, only able to see the chakra silhouettes of the people in the room. She could feel the warm essence of the chakra signatures in the room; Yamato, that woman-Kurenai, the medic-nins, and even that stupid ANBU member. Their signatures burned a bright hue and was colored with a loving blue.

Then she saw the faded dark grey chakra that radiated from the man on the examination table. Not only could she see it, but she could hear it. For some reason, it pulsed like that of a beating heart and Karin could hear its pounding, a sound so thunderous that it was as if the organ was inside of her own head.

Despite all the times she had used her sensory technique, Karin had never seen something like this before, not even with Sasuke, and she had witnessed the darkening of his chakra for awhile now. However, this was new to her and she didn't even know if she would be able to do anything about it. For one, Sasuke's chakra had never turned grey before. It withheld it's blue color, but the warmth of it was gone, leaving behind a cold, dead anger in its wake. His chakra also never pulsated; it only dimmed in revengeful silence.

This was Sasuke's choice. He had chosen this path, and his chakra had followed unwillingly and descended into the darkness that the Uchiha now found himself consumed by.

But it didn't seem like this man had chosen this.

Though the reverberating chakra only made her want to put as much distance between her and this man as possible, the melancholy feeling only brought her closer-out of fear for what might happen if nothing was done and out of sympathy for such pained chakra.

And out of curiosity for a chakra that challenged the darkness of Sasuke Uchiha's.

The thrumming chakra was, for lack of a better word, crying. It was screaming as if something had been bottled up for so long that it had to get out or else. It had finally had enough.

It was crying out for help.

Her feet unconsciously marching forward, Karin left the safety of the wall that separated the hallway and the room. She crossed the threshold and came closer, closer to group surrounding the man, closer to the dark colored chakra.

But Yamato stopped her in place.

"We should leave, Karin," he said, already attempting to usher her from the room. "We'll go get your vaccinations and-"

The redhead jerked away from his grip, eyes still locked on that grey chakra. "Wait! What's wrong with him?"

Though the question had been directed towards Yamato, Kurenai turned on her and her abnormally red colored orbs scrutinized on her with careful regard. "That's none of your concern," she retorted, voice coming out more like a growl than a simple statement. "You shouldn't even be here in the first place. Leave."

Again, Karin resisted Yamato's pull and yanked free from his grasp. "It might not be my concern, but the fact that his chakra is grey might be yours."

That grabbed everyone's attention and they all looked to her apprehensively, an uneasy light in their eyes. Even Kurenai and Yamato's similar hard expressions wavered at the newfound information and they shared perturbed glances. There was a long, anxious pause that followed and a hushed silence filled the room before Kurenai finally spoke up.

The older kunoichi made eye contact with one of the medic-nins and barked an order. "File a report of this examination and be sure to include what this girl just said. Lady Tsunade is going to want to know about this." Even before she finished what she was saying, the medic-nin had already started making their way across the room to the desk in the corner. She started to scribble wildly on a blank scroll, most likely what would be the report to be handed to their Hokage.

Yamato had released Karin by this point now, and he stared at the redhead with a questioning look. "I take it that you're a sensory type?"

She didn't have the chance to answer because Kurenai opened her mouth before she did. "She is," the woman replied. "There's no doubt about that. To some degree, we all can sense the chakra of those around us. However, only sensory types can heighten the skill." Whether the glint in her eyes was fascination or suspicion, Karin couldn't tell, but something caused a dazzle in her pupils when she looked at her. "But only sensory types of advanced skill can see what she saw. Even I am a sensory type myself and I only see blue chakra in him."

Karin wasn't surprised that her level of sensing outshined this older kunoichi. Not having the chance to grow combatant and train in endurance and physical strength, her expertise and usefulness came with her sensory skills and healing abilities. This woman probably focused her training on other areas such as ninjutsu, genjutsu and the like, but Karin wasn't really blessed with that opportunity. She didn't really know ninjutsu or anything of the sort so she honed in on what she did know and grew in that area through practice, experience and study.

And through all of that, she learned that a user could-usually without knowing it, obscure their own sorrows using their chakra. This wasn't a technique or a jutsu, it was more like something that just happened on its own.

A sensory type ninja can usually detect the changing of one's personality through their chakra, but this could override that ability completely if someone wasn't as sensitive as Karin was. In Kurenai's case, she could not sense the change in this man because her sensitivity was not strong enough, therefore she only saw blue. But Karin saw grey.

His personality had been consumed and overwritten by something that even sensory type-nins could not decipher without high skull level or deeper examination.

It was apparent that none of these Konoha shinobi knew what was going on with him and learning of his grey chakra seemed to only further their puzzlement.

Kurenai regarded her with a cold, stern stare and her face was twisted with confliction as if she were making an important decision. Finally, she asked such a simple question that Karin mentally slapped herself for holding her own breath.

"What is your name?"

"...Karin."

The woman nodded slowly and gestured for the medic-nins to make room. Though the blonde man had long calmed down, they still kept him restrained, shuffling to one side of the table to leave some space.

The black-haired kunoichi waved Karin over.

Cautiously, the redhead inched forward to the woman's side and found herself leaning over the unconscious man with grey chakra. Now that she was closer to him, she didn't feel so dumb for mistaking this man for Naruto. There was definitely some resemblance, but this man was rather handsome in Karin's opinion; spiky blonde hair, jaw-length bangs. His eyes were probably blue.

"Karin." Kurenai called, snapping the girl from her trance.

She jerked her head in the direction of the woman, meeting her serious gaze. With a curt tilt of her head, she motioned towards the man without any verbal instruction. Karin didn't need it; the gesture was enough, it was a silent exchange between two sensory type shinobi.

Though uncertain that her skill level would do much to decipher this unknown state of chakra, she reached out and touched him.


End file.
